Marc Marquez says drastic set-up alterations to his Repsol Honda and changing his own riding style rescued a difficult start to his Briti♔sh MotoGP race weekend to keep in touch with the front-runners despite assessing the resurfaced Silverstone as ‘a disaster’.

The reigning MotoGP world champion struggled in the opening practice session in 10^th – 1.6 seconds off pace-setter Ma𝄹verick Vinales – in a session where he almost pulled off a trademark save after losin🐓g the front of his bike into Brooklands.

Marquez explains extensive🅘 set-up changes after ‘everything was out’ saw him recover to take fourth place at the end of FP2, 0.144s off timesheet-topper Andrea Dovizioso, but concedes the༒ resurfaced Silverstone track remains a concern.

“I am very happy because we started with the worst Friday for us and the worst way,” Marquez said. “We started FP1 and everything was out, electronics, set-up of the bike, my riding style, everything was out 🌸and I was really far from the top.

“But then the team did an incredible job from FP1 to FꦛP2 and also I tried to analyse what was going on and we did a big step. We already have more or less the same pace as the top guys which is important.

“It was so difficult to understand in FP1 because like I sa🌜id everybody expected the new asphalt to give us a good track and it was a disaster. It was worse than last year, better grip but many bumps.

“In FP1 I ride too aggressive but also the bike was shaking ꦐa lot but then the front tyre was also not a good tyre for me so everything was going the wrong way, even the electronics was out, but then for FP2 the team worked a lot to give me another kind of set-up, another kind of electronics and I changed my riding style.

“All this means we improved the pace by one second and we were very close to Maverick and Dovi that are, at the moment, the fast🧸est ones but we are there very close and this is the mos♈t important thing because in a difficult situation you need to react.”

Marquez blamed the grass run-off area for denying him the chance to produce anothe🙈r incredible save after tucking the front of his Honda midway through FP1 as he shrugged off the incident.

“I arrived there with big bum🦹ps there and I already had chatter so then I lost the front,” he said. “But I started to try✱ to save it.

“When I saw that natural grass was there, I didn’t expect natural grass, b✅ecause we always try to remove it b🉐ut it was there and I lost it when I went into it.”