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21 Marc Márquez says he is "heal- ing well" after fracturing his hand in a training crash last week. Márquez suffered the injury – a torsion fracture of the fifth meta- carpal in his left hand – while out training on his mountain bike last Tuesday, and underwent surgery the following day. Heading to the Japanese Grand Prix, the repsol Honda rider is confident that he will be able to ride through the discomfort and make up for his first-lap exit at the previous aragón round. "Unfortunately last week I had a training accident whilst moun- tain biking and suffered a fracture in my left hand; I had an opera- tion on Wednesday and have been resting it since," he said. "I'm healing well and hope to be as fit as possible for this weekend. "aragón was a tough race and I made a mistake, now I'm eager to get to Japan. "Track conditions in Motegi can vary quite a lot and we will work hard on the set up in terms of the hard acceleration and braking in order to be at the front come Sun- day. "I hope we can have a good result in front of Honda's home fans!" Márquez sits third in the stand- ings 184 points, 79 adrift of leader Valentino rossi. Sport maltatoday, Wednesday, 7 OctOber 2015 football motogp motogp beckenbauer warning for pep guardiola bayern Munich's honorary president Franz beckenbauer has warned Pep Guardiola not to keep the club waiting over signing a new contract THe catalan coach's current deal expires next summer and the Bavarian club's chairman Karl-Heinz rummenigge said at the weekend that he still expects to have an answer from him by the end of the year. Beckenbauer feels that a de- cision would be best arriving sooner rather than later, allow- ing both the coach and the club to make plans for the coming years. "I think he already knows this," Beckenbauer told Sport1 tel- evision. "He's not going to leave Bayern waiting and then decide at some point in april or May. "It would be too late then. I ex- pect it to come sooner." Should Guardiola, who has led Bayern to back-to-back Bundes- liga titles as well as the UeFa Super cup, the FIFa club World cup and DFB-Pokal during his two years at the helm, decide to move on next year, Beckenbauer would prefer for him to inform them now. "Bayern would then need to look around, depending on what his answer is," he said. "It's only fair to Bayern." a 5-1 win over Borussia Dort- mund at the weekend saw Bayern extend their lead at the top of the table to seven points. They can break another league record when they travel to Wer- der Bremen next weekend, by winning their ninth straight match since the start of the sea- son, but Beckenbauer does not expect them to get through the whole season unbeaten. "We've only played eight match- es and there are still plenty of points to be played for," he said. "Bayern are going to have a dip - we saw that last year too. They were equally dominant up to the winter break and then they lost their way a bit in the second half of the season. "By then, they were already too far ahead to be caught and still managed to win the league. "The table looks like they are dominating, but it didn't look that way to start with because there were a few tight and lucky wins in there." Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Pep Guardiola Márquez's fractured hand 'healing well' Marc Márquez Pirelli expects more pit-stops at Sochi PIrellI expects this year's rus- sian Grand Prix to feature two or three pit-stops per driver, as opposed to the one-stop strat- egy which dominated the inau- gural 2014 event. Pirelli supplied its Soft and Medium tyre compounds for the sport's first visit to Sochi autodrom, but will this season provide the Super Soft and Soft combination. "There were a number of ques- tion marks that we faced coming to Sochi for the first time – as is inevitably the case with any new circuit – but we have since been able to collect extra data that means we have more informa- tion for 2015," said Pirelli Mot- orsport Director Paul Hembery. "as a result, we have gone a step softer with the tyre nomi- nation this year to help us get back into the two to three pit stop window, which is what we desire for every race. "However, both ourselves and all the teams are learning more about this circuit all the time, despite the advancement of sim- ulation technology. "The track has quite a wide variety of different corners, so it makes for a good all-round test for the tyres, with the driv- ers able to benefit from the ex- tra speed of the supersoft this year." Force India driver Sergio Pé- rez has tipped the tyre choice to "mix up" strategies. Your first click of the daY www.maltatoday.com.mt JorGe lorenzo is adamant that he will be able to race "without prob- lems" at this weekend's Japanese Grand Prix, despite injuring his shoulder in a training accident. lorenzo suffered a sprained shoulder when he fell from a mini bike during a training session last Saturday, an incident his Yamaha team has described as a "small crash". "as you may have heard, I had a small incident while I was training, but I'm well, I just have a bit of pain in my left shoulder, but I will race without any problems in Motegi," said lorenzo. Before his training crash, lorenzo stormed to his sixth win of the sea- son at Motorland aragón, a result that moved the Spaniard to within 14 points of team-mate and cham- pionship leader Valentino rossi. "I have still great feelings from aragón," lorenzo, champion in 2010 and 2012, explained. "It was a nice victory in front of our home crowd. We were also able to achieve the Teams' Title for Yamaha. The weekend was perfect and we could make up some good points compared to Valentino. "The championship is amazing in this last part of the season but from now on we need to stay more focused if we want to keep the mo- mentum and try to win the title." lorenzo has won the past two races at Motegi, and not finished off the podium since 2010. "Motegi is a typical stop and go circuit but for some reason I could do great races in the past even if it may be better suited for our rivals," he said. "This year we go there eager to do another great battle so hopefully we could do another nice race and try to make the championship tighter." Lorenzo to race 'without problems' in Japan Jorge Lorenzo