The full exclusive interview with six-time MotoGP champion Marc Marquez, as he prepares to leave Repsol Honda and join Gresini Ducati next season.
It’s late afternoon on Thursday at the Thai MotoGP in Buriram. Marc Marquez strides into the Repsol Honda hospitality with the same sense of purpose as he enters a racetrack.Great memories for you here in 2019 Marc, when you won the race and title. You looked unstoppable. Not long after came Jerez 2020 and we all know the story since then.
“And yeah, it was a big decision especially to go out from my team. The team of my MotoGP career. The team of my life, which is the Repsol Honda team, with all the Japanese and Spanish staff we have here.How hard was it to tell Alberto Puig and your crew? Were you worried they might take it personally, that you were leaving them?“It was difficult because I know that all of them have a lot of confidence in me and believe a lot in my skills.
You’ve always been the number one guy at the Honda factory, leading the project with results and pushing it forward. How will you handle being in the queue at Ducati, behind four official riders?“Of course, if you see it from the outside, it's difficult to understand the move. But it's what I said about the salary, I have a mentality and for me a winner’s mentality means being convinced about what you do. And my priority was to find the best of what I think I need right now.
“Success in this move doesn't mean wins. It means trying to be in those top positions of course - in some races, maybe not in every race. We will see. But for me success means enjoying it again on the riding style and having again those butterflies in the stomach to ride a MotoGP bike.”You’re the biggest star in MotoGP now at circuits around the world, a hero... But maybe not in Italy! Because of the Rossi thing. And there has been the booing etc.
There has also been Rossi, Lorenzo and Stoner with multiple titles in recent history. Why is there this divide between the champions, where some can only reach that level once, but others do it again and again?“Because it's super difficult to keep the pressure. If you check during the pre-season on a single day of testing, or during a practice, everybody's able to be super-fast at some time.
“But, for example, the Repsol Honda team, have enough capacity and enough performance to develop two different bikes. And it's what they did in that moment. Dani was doing his line . I was doing my line.
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