After starting the race thirteenth and serving a long lap penalty, Joan Mir finished eleventh in the Portuguese Grand Prix, taking his first five points of the season. Marc Márquez suffered a crash early on, ending his race.
As a notable novelty on Sunday, only the Warm Up for the premier class was held, the action beginning with the Moto3, Moto2 and finally MotoGP races.
Joan Mir concluded a difficult weekend in a positive way. He started the Portuguese Grand Prix race from thirteenth position and had to serve a long lap penalty due to an incident with Fabio Quartararo in the Sprint Race on Saturday. Mir set a steady pace and finally crossed the finish line eleventh after making a great comeback.
Márquez suffered a crash on the third lap that prevented him from finishing the race. The Repsol Honda Team rider, who had started from pole position, had to go to the circuit medical centre to have his right hand examined, revealing a possible fracture of his first metacarpal. Márquez will undertake further tests on Monday at the Dexeus Hospital in Barcelona. He also received a double long-lap penalty for the Argentina GP.
After the Portuguese Grand Prix, Márquez is eleventh in the championship with 7 points and Joan Mir is thirteenth with 5 points. Next weekend the second round of the season will be held at the Circuito de Termas de Río Hondo, in Argentina.
MARC MÁRQUEZ – DNF
“First of all I want to say that I am very sorry to Oliveira, his team and the Portuguese fans because it was his race. I did a really big mistake today, of course it was not my intention to have this happen, my intention was not even to overtake Martin at that point, but I had a massive lock with the front. Maybe the hard front was not fully up to temperature, I released the brakes and the bike went inside. I avoided Martin but made contact with Oliveira. I straight away went over to Miguel and then in the medical center I went to check on him – fortunately it looks like he is OK and this is the most important thing. On my side I have some pain in my right hand and with my knee but this is not so important at the minute. I fully accept and respect the penalty of the double long-lap during the Argentina GP because I did a mistake.”
JOAN MIR – 11th
“The crash from yesterday impacted today a lot, not just because of the long lap penalty. If I was able to finish the Sprint race I would have had a lot more understanding of the bike because today’s race was the first time I was able to do more than ten laps in a row on the bike. This meant I spent a lot of today learning, so from this side today was a positive because I understood more. I still need more time to improve how I am riding and how the bike is behaving, especially to get the most out of the tyre over the race. With a bit more knowledge we could have made a very good race, but I am happy to have the experience now.”
