Repsol rider rounds off difficult weekend with podium finish, recovering lead of Moto2 World Championship standings.
To round off a difficult weekend in which a Saturday morning crash severely affected his performance in qualifying, Marc Márquez took a praiseworthy third place on race day. With the sixteen points taken at the British GP, Márquez now leads the Moto2 standings.
Heavy rain stayed away from the intermediate category contest, although a few drops did fall just as Race Direction had declared the GP a wet race. The early pase was frantic, as five riders stormed to the front and left the rest of the field behind. Home riders Smith and Redding led the way, followed by Espargaró, Márquez and Iannone. Smith lost ground on lap two when in the lead of the race, as his rivals passed him and established a gap.
The foursome moved further ahead as the laps went on, until Espargaró overtook Redding and began to pull away. He made the most of the battle between Redding and Márquez that slowed the duo down, establishing a gap of more than a second over them. The fight for second concluded with a spectacular final lap, with on-the-limit passes, but the position eventually went to Redding by a narrow margin on the line.
Third place for Márquez means that he regains the lead of the overall standings, six points ahead of British GP winner Espargaró.
Marc Márquez >> Audio
3rd at 1.521 sec.
“Today things were very difficult. Looking at where we were yesterday, this is a great result. We managed to make some improvements in the warmup, but we new that we’d have it tough in the race. We saw that the Kalex goes well here and I decided to give 100% in the race, whilst also aiming to take as many points as possible for the championship. The pace was very high right from the start, so maybe if Iannone, Redding and myself had not been passing one another, Pol [Espargaró] wouldn’t have got away. That’s what happened though, and when I got ahead in order to recover ground, Redding passed me again. Taking home 16 points at a tough track for us is very important and I have to give special thanks to my team. They have been working so hard all weekend —above all yesterday when they were up until two in the morning making changes”.
