Bezzecchi plays it safe ahead of home race: “The weekend at Aragon was more important”
Marco Bezzecchi arrives at the MotoGP weekend in Misano in third place in the World Championship. The Aprilia rider is trying to keep the pressure at bay that comes with being a local hero at a race so close to his hometown.
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A victory in Saturday’s sprint race and a lap-by-lap battle for victory in Sunday’s race with the eventual winner and, at the end of the season, world champion Marc Márquez: Marco Bezzecchi has been asked several times about last year’s MotoGP weekend at Misano, where the 28-year-old missed out on victory on Sunday by just a few tenths of a second.
Bezzecchi, who has never won at Misano in the premier class, does not see himself as a favourite: “This year’s bike is completely different from last year’s, and the conditions are also very different. Last year the weather was perfect; this year it will be trickier.” His physical condition is also making riding more difficult for the rider with the number 72: “I’m not as fit as I was last year. My shoulder is finally back to normal, but my knee is still causing me problems.”
His main goal, he says, is “to get back to the form I was in at the start of the season.” From the second Grand Prix of the year onwards, “Bezz” led the World Championship standings and also won the first race of the season on Italian soil at Mugello. However: “Mugello was a brilliant race weekend, but this one will be completely different!” In Tuscany, following his Grand Prix victory, the Italian was celebrated by a crowd of fans whilst in tears in the paddock. This was followed by the proverbial crash, with violent and serious crashes at Assen and the Sachsenring.
The local hero doesn’t want to overestimate the significance of the race weekend on the doorstep of his home town and is trying to keep the pressure at bay: “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to win, and it is a special race. But it’s just a single race. Aragon was more important to me personally!” On Spanish soil, Bezzecchi secured third place in both the Sprint and Sunday races, confirming his results from the previous race weekend at Silverstone.
Exciting: with a victory on home soil – Bezzecchi lives 15 minutes away in Rimini – ‘Bez’ could return to the top of the standings. With Marc Márquez, who is five points ahead of him, the red flag is in prime position.
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