Marc Marquez heads to Austria with 48-point advantage over Jorge Lorenzo

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The long summer pause that followed the German GP saw Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa take a breath and recharge the batteries before a busy second half of the season (eight races in 12 weeks before the season-ending Valencian round in November), gets underway in Austria this weekend, with Marc Marquez leading the Championship and Dani Pedrosa fourth in the standings.

While the Repsol HRC men have not ridden their factory MotoGP machines at the Austrian venue, Marc and Dani did ride a few laps at the circuit in June aboard the RC213V-S.

Marc Marquez – Leading Championship on 170 points

“The holidays have been very good because we started the summer break knowing we had worked as well as possible with my team and with Honda in the first part of the season.

MotoGP 2016 - Round Nine - Sachsenring - Marc Marquez, Valentino Rossi — MotoGP 2016 – Round Nine – Sachsenring – Marc Marquez, Valentino Rossi

“I had some time off, resting and relaxing with my friends on the beach. Anyway, a quite hectic and challenging second half of the season is about to begin, requiring our total concentration and a lot of hard work, so I also spent some time preparing myself with cycling and supermotard training.

“Now I really look forward to getting back to racing my bike and to riding again at the Red Bull Ring. I had the chance to enjoy this amazing track twice, even if I wasn’t riding my factory bike and of course I couldn’t push as much as I like.

Red Bull Ring Spielberg - Image provided by MotoGP/Dorna — Red Bull Ring Spielberg – Image provided by MotoGP/Dorna

“It’s a circuit that’s quite enjoyable; some things about it remind me of Austin in that you have to brake very hard and stop the bike and turn quickly, but then there’s the last part that’s faster.

“I think it’s a good track for the World Championship and I can’t wait to ride there with a MotoGP bike. When you approach a weekend at a new circuit, it’s different and you have to be able to adapt as quickly as possible.

Marc Marquez, Dani Pedrosa, Jorge Lorenzo

“I’m also proud to race there because my fan club will join us with many Austrian fans. I’m sure we’ll have a great weekend and hopefully sunny weather.”

Dani Pedrosa – 4th in Championship on 96 points

“The chance to spend some time on holiday with my friends has been very good but it’s now time to focus again on the work ahead. We went to the Red Bull Ring for some filming last June, and we were able to do a few laps on the RC213V-S, which is quite an amazing and fast bike.

“The circuit is in the middle of the woods, a beautiful place indeed. It’s short but it’s quite interesting because the width changes a lot so that there are very wide parts and some narrower ones. I would say the hardest thing is that there’s only one line and that makes overtaking difficult.

“Anyway there are two or three points at which there’s pretty hard braking and where you can overtake because the track is wide. It has a combination of corners that include more right-handers than left-handers, but above all there’s a long time where the bike flows a lot. It only stops hard at two corners. It’s nice to see how you go up the hill and then back down.