Marc Marquez may have failed to finish the CatalanGP after falling at turn 10 but the Repsol Honda rider is delighted with his progress and rehabilitation.

“Today I enjoyed, I was pushing. I mean, I was Marc!” the Spaniard declared from the Barcelona paddock as he reflected on the day.

“For me was the best seven laps in the year, so I was riding like I won. On the grid I say ‘okay today is the time to take a risk.’

“Doesn’t matter where we are, doesn’t matter where I come from. I don’t care what the people can say, just that I believe that today was the day to take a risk because for me, to just burn fuel and burn the tyres, riding for P12, P14 is not me, so this is what I did.

“I push in the beginning, as you saw. I did a few overtakes, I enjoyed, and then as soon as everybody was on the pace, we were not at the correct point. I know that there was three or four critical laps there, where the others were riding in the low 40’s. That was not my pace, but I say ‘okay, if I keep these three laps, I will be able to keep all the race with them,’ but on the three laps I take too much risk.

“I was behind Aleix [Espargaro], I was losing a lot on turn two and acceleration of turn three and turn four, then I lose a little bit on the acceleration of turn five, I lose a little bit more on the acceleration of turn nine, and then I try to recover on the brakes. Is true that I don’t make a massive brake point - because Viñales was behind Mir and he brake even later than me, but he is able to stop and I’m not able to stop. I just locked the front and I crash.

“Of course I’m not happy about the result, but I’m happy because of the way that I did that seven laps. I prefer to do a good seven laps than not, and just finish the race and stay on the bike,” he concluded.

Tomorrow sees the paddock remain at Montmeló for a one day test, the first since Jerez five weeks ago. Marquez was forced to call time on his previous testing duties after just seven laps due to his physical condition - with progress on his right arm still in its infancy and having suffered two big crashes across the race weekend. The Honda rider is therefore hopeful of a positive day ahead with the team placing more emphasis on the test than even the recent race weekend.

“In Jerez, I had a very big crash on Saturday then my physical condition was worse than now. These last two races, also, is strange, because I did the opposite as 2019 - I don’t crash on the practice but then on the race, I just take more risk and I don’t know the limits. This is the strategy, is true that is not working at the moment but we will try to change in the future.

“Today we just did seven, eight laps. Looks like tomorrow, the physical condition will be a problem maybe in the afternoon but in the morning I can test the normal way. So we have a few important things and is true that for us, is much more important tomorrow than today. We said ‘today we just finish the race, tomorrow is the day. Tomorrow is the important day’.

“We need to try a few things on the bike and just to understand, we will not be like half second faster, but to understand for the future.”