Marc Marquez says he was making “too many saves” during Friday MotoGP practice for the Malaysian Grand Prix, and is worried Ducati is on “another level” in terms of race pace.
Marquez ended Friday's running at Sepang second overall and just 0.093 seconds from pacesetter Alex Rins on the Suzuki.
However, the Honda rider suffered numerous front-end saves at various points of the 3.4-mile Malaysian circuit, which he blamed on his preferred hard front tyre bing “too hard”.
Admitting he needs to “manage” his riding “another way” on Saturday because he had “too many moments”, the Spaniard is concerned Ducati and Andrea Dovizioso are on “another level”.
“I mean was a good day but this afternoon we struggled a lot,” the world champion stated.
“This afternoon we understand why we struggled, so for tomorrow I hope we can manage in another way because I had too many saves, too many moments.
“Front tyre was a little bit too hard in the other runs, but in the last run I go back to the medium tyre and I start to feel again better.
“But we were able to be fast, it's true on race pace we need to work hard because Ducati – especially Dovizioso – is in another level, so we need to work to be closer to him.
“But it's true we still need to work with the bike.”
Dovizioso backed up Marquez's claims by stating Ducati was able to “improve” the bike using two different set-ups, and is yet to show his true hand over a single lap after focusing the entirety of FP2 on race runs.
“Really good, we start with a good speed this morning with not a special condition on the asphalt,” seventh-placed Dovizioso said.
“This afternoon we work, we did a good laptime this morning, so we were able to work just on the race pace this afternoon.
“The pace is good. We wanted to try just with the soft rear tyre, and at the moment it looks really good.
“The speed was there, we also try two different set-ups and we were able to improve the bike. So the feeling is really good.”
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