Gresini rider Marc Marquez believes the way to challenge Ducati's new "super fast" GP24 bikes at some MotoGP tracks demands a strong start to the weekend.
Facing an ever-larger gap to the factory-spec machines on his GP23, Marquez has managed to stand on the podium just once in the last four rounds, with factory rider Enea Bastianini's improved form making it harder to break inside the top three.
This month's British Grand Prix was another demonstration of the step Ducati has made with this year's MotoGP bike, with the podium locked out by three riders on the latest-spec GP24. Even Pramac's Franco Morbidelli was able to propel himself into the top 10 despite getting two long-lap penalties for an incident in the sprint race.
Marquez said the way Aprilia's Aleix Espargaro and his own brother Alex went from winning races at Silverstone last year to finishing sixth and seventh in 2024 is a clear indication that the GP24 has left its competitors behind.
But the six-time MotoGP champion believes that if he and Gresini prepare correctly, there is still a chance to put up a fight to the newest Desmosedicis, especially at those tracks where the bike's advantage is muted.
"It's not related to the rear tyre, it's related to the evolution of the bikes," he said when asked if the GP24 was adapting better to the new tyres introduced by Michelin this year.
"If you see last year at this racetrack, my brother Alex and Fabio Di Giannantonio, they were the fastest guys on the race track and Aleix won with Aprilia.
"And [this year] I finished in front of Aleix's Aprilia, I finished in front of Diggia, I finished in front of my brother Alex [but still only fourth].
"In the end, the performance is there, but it looks like the '24 bikes at some race tracks are super fast. Especially in this one where you have long straights with the rear [height] device, with more top speed, the difference is a bit bigger.
"But as we showed on Sunday, if we work in a good way, this weekend we were a bit delayed, we can be on a good level to fight with them - but always on the limit."
Finishing fourth last Sunday, Marquez's deficit to race winner Bastianini was 6.9s after 20 laps around the Silverstone circuit.
The 31-year-old feels he needs to improve his speed by at least two-to-three-tenths in order to put up a more equal fight to his rivals from the factory Ducati and Pramac teams.
"At the moment, on average we are four, five seconds slower in the race," he said. "So we need to improve more than two-three tenths per lap if we want to fight with them.
"It doesn't look so bad but it's a lot. So that will be difficult but our target is to one more time be on that top five-four, and if we can, fight for the podium as we did in other races."
Marquez is currently in his first season with the satellite Gresini squad after ending his tenure at Honda with a year left on his contract.
Although the Spaniard has stated in the past that he has completed his adaptation to the GP23, he explained that it still takes time to get the best out of the bike at every track.
This is why he believes it is important for him to be on the pace straight away in Friday practice after admitting that he felt "lost" on the first day of track action at Silverstone last weekend.
"It's the first year," he said. "When you have one bike and you arrive first year at a circuit, you know the bike and you know the circuit.
"At some race tracks we start like Jerez and we don't touch anything, but here [at Silverstone] we start with our base but we change the bike completely. And in the end, we improved.
"You don't know [if we will need to make changes to the bike]. It's always a question mark. We always try to be ready in two different ways but in FP1 sometimes it is difficult to understand."
