Reigning MotoGP World Champion Marc Marquez cruised to his fourth win out of four races at Jerez today after taking the lead from Valentino Rossi on lap two and clearing off into the distance to take victory in his 100th grand prix.
Although the results will show Marquez crossing the line with only 1.4s in hand, his lead was the business end of five seconds with 12 laps to go and the question remains what can be done about the Repsol Honda wunderkind, who picked up his first ever win at the Spanish track.
“This was the only circuit where I never won and it is fantastic especially as it is a place where I always struggle a bit. I didn’t expect a race like that, I expect that Valentino and especially Dani and Jorge would be more strong but I saw that in the beginning I open a small gap, and every lap was a little bit bigger, so I continued pushing but at the end I struggle a little bit with the tyre,” said Marquez.
Movistar Yamaha’s Valentino Rossi held off a last-ditch charge from Dani Pedrosa to take second place, defending nicely into the last corner to pick up 20 points and beating team-mate Jorge Lorenzo on a level playing field for the first time in a long time.
The Doctor picked up the lead from Marquez halfway through lap one after Andrea Dovizioso got the holeshot but immediately ran wide and Lorenzo made a proper mess of it but was soon through to third.
Marquez sat behind The Doctor until the last corner, Lorenzo’s, and then made a pass and wasn’t to be seen again by the Italian until the end of the race when he had slowed dramatically to take in the applause of the crowd.
It was a fight for second until mid-distance when Rossi managed to pull a gap of three-quarters of a second over Lorenzo and Pedrosa who said in parc ferme that his front tyre didn’t allow him to go with Marquez in the early laps.
Pedrosa waited for his tyre to come to him - it was the same medium compound as Marquez - before he put a pass on Lorenzo for third place with seven laps to go and then set about chasing down the gap to Rossi. Had the little Spaniard had another lap, he could well have demoted the Italian but Rossi was just savvy enough not to leave a gap into the last corner and Pedrosa had no way past, settling for the final podium spot.
“Unfortunately Marc was too strong but it is a great pleasure to finish in front of Dani and Jorge to be on the podium,” said Rossi.
Lorenzo faded fast as soon as he was passed, dropping his laptimes by a second to finish seven seconds behind Pedrosaand maybe his choice of the medium front tyre compared to Rossi’s hard compound was the deciding factor.
Ducati’s Andrea Dovizioso held off a late charge by Alvaro Bautista to keep hold of fifth place while he also had Aleix Espargaro and Bradley Smith for company. Pol Espargaro and Stefan Bradl completed the top ten but that is bad news for the German as his spot in the LCR team is coming under increasing scrutiny.
Nicky Hayden won the battle of the Production Hondas ahead of Hiro Aoyama and Scott Redding while Michael Laverty finished in 16th place, agonisingly close to a point.
Cal Crutchlow retired from the race with brake failure.
