Marquez puts 'Plan A' to devastating effect

On pole and the clear pre-race favourite, Marc Marquez concocted two different strategies depending on his position at turn one of Sunday's Argentina MotoGP.

"Plan A was a good start, pushing from the beginning," said the reigning five-time MotoGP champion.

"Or Plan B, which was not such a good start - because you never know about Ducati with that holeshot system! I was thinking if they start first, I will save the tyres in the beginning and push in the end."

RESPECT @marcmarquez93 and @ValeYellow46 shake hands after the #ArgentinaGP race  pic.twitter.com/QvRAcFqfHL

— MotoGP™ (@MotoGP) March 31, 2019

But the Repsol Honda rider did get the holeshot and put Plan A to devastating effect.

"The start was perfect, I was so concentrated. I saw in the first lap that it was '+0.7', maybe a little bit more, and then just I kept pushing. I understood that the first laps were where I could make the biggest difference and this was the strategy.

"At the end I was not pushing at my 100 percent because I was trying to manage the risk."

Marquez's official winning margin was 9.816s, despite backing off in the closing stages, making it his biggest ever dry victory.

"We need to enjoy and be happy about the weekend, but in the end the [winning margin] was big but the 25 points are the same," said the Spaniard, whose only real difficulty this weekend was when his chain derailed in FP4.

"So I'm happy, but we need to keep pushing because other tracks will arrive where we will struggle more. But when we have this feeling, we need to use all our potential to take the 25 points.

"For some reason this weekend since I went out from the pit box I was in good shape and when you are in good shape, when you have that sweet feeling, everything comes easier."

With Qatar winner Andrea Dovizioso losing second place to Valentino Rossi on the final lap, Marquez also takes over the early world championship lead, at a venue where he suffered a nightmare three race penalties and zero points one year ago.

"Last year I felt very similar," Marquez said of his start to the season. "I mean, last year of course here we took zero points here, but the speed was there. I was really, really fast on the race but we did a few mistakes.

"Now we will see, but always I try to be quiet because the championship is very long and other tracks will arrive.

"But what I can see is that it's always the same names up around the top five. That means if you do one mistake you can drop many positions in the championship…"

Round three takes place at COTA in two weeks, a track Marquez has never been beaten at.