Spain’s Alex Marquez made history in Valencia today, taking the Moto3 World Championship crown and became, with brother Marc, the first brothers to win Grand Prix titles in the same year.
Marquez was involved in a titanic scrap for the entire race but his third place was enough to take the title with rival Jack Miller winning the encounter after a last-lap dice with fellow KTM rider Isaac Vinales who took second.
Britain’s Danny Kent was in a position to spoil the party for Marquez as had he finished ahead of the Spaniard, Miller would have taken the title but the Husqvarna man - who moves to Honda next year - just couldn’t bridge the 0.2s gap on the last lap after making a small error in the chicane.
In a race that had a colossal number of passes and permutations, both Miller and Marquez had to recover from errors which put them down into sixth place and the pair used superior racecraft to make their way back to the winning and podium spots.
Marquez had team-mate Alex Rins riding shotgun for a majority of the race but was also waved past by fellow Honda man Efren Vasquez with five laps to go as he tried to get back to the rear wheel of Miller.
The Australian also had help with a whole raft of KTM machinery, and one Husqvarna which is a re-badged KTM, around him but it was not enough for Miller, who was understandably deflated in parc ferme, but at least he gets to start his MotoGP career tomorrow in testing.
Scotland's John McPhee was in contention for a podium spot for almost the entire race but crashed in the closing stages. He re-mounted to finish in 17th place.
