Marc Marquez was baffled with the struggles during practice at the French Grand Prix that saw him fail to book a passage into Q2 for the first time in MotoGP in 2024.
The Spaniard languished down in 13th position at the conclusion of the second practice session, despite being within seven-tenths of Jorge Martin’s pacesetting time.
Marquez crashed his Ducati Desmosedici GP23 at Turn 12 in the opening stages of FP2 as he pushed too hard on the front as the bike gave out from underneath him.
Despite circulating several more times, a yellow flag for Enea Bastianini’s stricken Ducati and a mistake on his final run at Turn 5 has resigned Marquez to a Q1 outing.
“I’m struggling because I’m pushing too much on the front because I don’t feel the rear. So, we need to understand how to feel better on the rear,” Marquez rued.
“Today was the first crash for overriding, I was fighting against the bike. I was not smooth enough, I was not clean on the lines and in that crash, I leant too much.”
Marquez is known to push his bike to its limit each weekend, finding the boundaries and attempting to surpass it during practice sessions and stretch it further.
He continued: “I don’t expect to struggle here in Le Mans, but it can happen. So, we need to understand where we are losing and what we need to do.”
The six-time World Champion made some adjustments to his set-up during FP1, meaning faster lap times but more a less stable Ducati bike at his disposal.
“A big difference to this morning. This morning, we tried one thing and we decided to go in that direction,” he explained.
“Now we will have some question marks and then maybe we need to make a step back and try to understand better for tomorrow.”
Neither Gresini Ducati rider made it into Q2, with Alex Marquez ending his session 19th fastest and over a second adrift from Martin, who dominated Friday running.
“It’s the first Friday in the season that we struggled, so now it’s time to react. Other riders have struggled on a Friday and have reacted well, so now we need to react well.”
