After being the unquestionable leading man on his first appearance on a Ducati MotoGP bike, at the post-season test at Valencia last November, for his second outing 10 weeks later Marc Marquez took on more of a supporting role.
Severely limited by persistent technical gremlins on the first day of three, outside of the top 10 for most of the test, six tenths down on the timesheet-topping Pecco Bagnaia in the end. This was exactly the competitive picture, arguably, that Marquez was setting the stage for in consistently playing down his chances between Valencia and now.
But you’d still be hard-pressed to find many who think he’ll actually struggle. Brother and Gresini Ducati team-mate Alex Marquez described him as being already “too close”. Jorge Martin said: “He’s where I expected. He will be really close and ready maybe for the victory in Qatar.”
Of course, those words must be taken with a grain of salt. After all, it’s not like even the outspoken Martin would go out there and say, ‘nah, you know what, Marc’s not cutting it, the only way he’ll see the podium in Qatar is through binoculars’.
But also, nobody will say that because, even if Marquez’s Sepang test wasn’t perfect, it does not seem accurate at all to suggest he struggled.
