Maintaining pressure on his rivals appears to be more important to world champion Marc Marquez than breaking records.
Barring any upsets, an almost peerless Marquez will be racing against the history books at the Shell Malaysia Motorcycle Grand Prix which starts at the Sepang Circuit today.
The Spaniard is now on the cusp of breaking the record for most points scored in a MotoGP season. Marquez had last week overtaken Mick Doohan as Honda’s most successful premier class rider with his win at Phillip Island.
He currently has 375 points after 17 races and needs just nine more points to break the current record of 383 set by Repsol Honda teammate Jorge Lorenzo, then riding for Yamaha in 2010.
A seventh place finish or higher at Sepang would do the job for Marquez, who won here last year as well as in 2014.
Marquez, however, stresses that he is more focused on maintaining his momentum rather than records.
“It’s true that I can be the rider with the most points from 18 races (in a season) but it is a record which we will only remember if there is somebody else close to beating it (record) again,”
“So I don’t care about this record. I will just maintain the same mentality as we did earlier this season. There will be no change in strategy.
“The target is to finish on the podium in the last two races of the season. Of course if you ask me today, I would like to win the race but our opponents will only give the answer - whether it is possible for me to do so - over the weekend.
“Fighting hard for victory and placing pressure on our opponents is the best way to finish the season.”
Ducati’s Andrea Dovizioso, a winner in the wet here in 2016 and 2017, admits that he, and many others, are struggling to find a way to beat Marquez. The latter has won the last five races in the series.
“Everybody in this championship is working very hard (to overcome Marquez). As I said before, it is difficult to say what exactly it is we have to do (to beat him) because the gap is ridiculous,” said Dovizioso, who has already secured second place in the championship this year.
“But having said that, anything is possible and over the past few years we have shown that we are able to fight more and more.”
Petronas Yamaha Sepang Racing Team’s (SRT) Fabio Quartararo, who suffered an ankle injury after crashing at Philipp Island, admitted that he has yet to fully recover but remains eager to impress the team’s home crowd.
“It (ankle) is getting better but there is still a lot of pain. I am not 100 per cent but I will try my best here,” said Quartararo.
“Honestly, it (Sepang) is a track where I have always been fast during Moto2 and Moto3 and we also made some good progress here during the pre-season test.
“I feel comfortable here and hopefully we can race in normal (dry) conditions without rain.”
Quartararo, who has already secured the Rookie of the Year title, is one of the few riders who have been able to give Marquez a scare this season.