Repsol Honda rider extends his lead of the MotoGP World Championship in a thrilling race full of overtaking and with up to six riders battling for the win.
Marc Márquez took his fourth victory of the season, opening a gap from his rivals on the final laps after an evenly-matched group race.
With this win, the second at Assen for the current MotoGP World Champion, he extends his lead of the overall standings to 41 points.
Dani Pedrosa, who started from eighteenth on the grid, took the chequered flag in fifteenth place.
Marc Márquez 1st | 41’13.863
“It was a crazy race, full of adrenaline—this feeling is one of the reasons we do this sport! Yesterday, I was expecting something like this, but nothing like it actually was! We were a wild bunch, everyone fighting against everyone; I think all of us made contact with somebody else at some point. We had to attack and defend, attack and defend. We had so many ‘big moments’ and risked crashing. It was crazy! It was impossible to define the best strategy, impossible to make plans, so eventually I decided to just fight and see what we could do in the end. In the last three laps, I gave it everything, no matter the tyres, no matter the Championship. I had been trying to reduce the group because when you’re fighting for the title, you just want the fewest riders possible at the front, but it was difficult. Only when I saw I had more than one and a half seconds of advantage before the last lap did I think, Okay, we’ve got it, let’s just finish this lap. It was an important win and 25 very important points, but we need to keep going, keep pushing, and keep this same level.”
Dani Pedrosa 15th | +16.043
“It’s been a very difficult weekend, including the race. We didn’t start well and couldn’t make any progress in the early laps. In the beginning I had the same feeling from practice but little by little I started to be faster and more comfortable, so I improved my pace in the end and was able to do some decent lap times. I still wasn’t fast enough in the final chicane, but at least in the end I was lapping better than during the rest of weekend. We must work and try to be faster in qualifying.”
