2016 MotoGP World Champion places second at Valencia in his 150th Grand Prix, after a great comeback from sixth position. Dani Pedrosa’s race comes to an early end following a crash.
The Valencia Grand Prix brought the curtain down on the MotoGP World Championship for another year, and Marc Marquez ended the 2016 season by taking second place on Sunday. The Repsol Honda rider did not make a good start and had to climb back up from the sixth position he had dropped to on the opening lap, but managed to place on the rostrum on his 150th Grand Prix appearance thanks to his pace and determination. With 10 laps remaining he was second, 5 seconds behind Jorge Lorenzo, and he further reduced the gap to just a single second before the chequered flag. Repsol Honda teammate Dani Pedrosa took off well from eighth place on the grid, and gained three positions on Lap 1. However, he crashed out on Lap 7 and his day was brought to a premature conclusion.
Marc Marquez
2nd, at 1.185 sec. ˃˃ Audio
“We’re happy because we’ve managed to get on the podium and we’ve finished the season strongly. This is the most important thing. In the race, the start penalized us a lot as I had an issue with the clutch and lost several positions. Afterward I wasted a lot of time behind Rossi and Iannone. As Valentino said yesterday, overtaking is difficult on this track, so even if I was able to get close, to pass them was another story because I was losing under acceleration and was a bit on the limit under braking. I waited behind as the tyres began to affect performance, and step-by-step I continued improving until I found the opportunity to pass them. From then on I was able to improve my speed, and maybe if the race had lasted a little longer I might have reached Lorenzo. Anyway, he had an incredible race and I was not able to catch him. Congrats to him for this result. It hasn’t been an easy season but we were able to win the title in Japan and secure the Constructors Championship this weekend, which is great. Now we’ll work hard starting from the next test to try and improve our bike even more”.
Dani Pedrosa
Not classified ˃˃ Audio
“It’s a shame about the crash. I started well and was taking things calmly since I didn’t feel perfectly good with the tyres. Unfortunately, after just a few laps, on the entrance to turn 2, without pushing, the rear stepped out, and at the same time I also lost the front and couldn’t avoid the crash. I don’t know what went wrong because I wasn’t riding at the limit. It was a pity not to finish the race, which was our intention. We’ve come to the end of a difficult year, but we’ll try our best to do better next season.”
