Brno and Indianapolis are now just a memory and Marc Márquez and his team have put the icing on the cake today after the excellent team work carried out throughout the weekend. Today’s win is a significant boost to the morale of the entire team that works with Marc and obviously, for the rider himself, who confirms that he is a worthy candidate for the title. The win against an aggressive Terol confirms this.
Márquez proved very fast in yesterday’s qualifying and only a very fast last lap from Smith in the last minute, with no chance to respond, prevented him from securing another pole position. In spite of everything and with the second best time on the grid, young Márquez and his team had prepared a very well-defined strategy. Opting for a softer compound tyre than his rivals, the team captained by Aki Ajo and the rider knew that the harder compound – which his main rivals had chosen – skids too much as it gets more worn out. With the softer tyre, however, performance improves lap after lap and this was the card that Marc had up his sleeve.
The race started with Marc and Terol up front along with Espargaró and Vázquez, and Smith and Cortese a little further behind. As the first few laps passed, a group of three –Márquez, Espargaró and Terol – started breaking away from the rest, who rode in a second group. Out in front, Márquez and Terol took turns to lead, while Espargaró had to push hard to keep up with them. With ten laps to go, a change of pace left Espargaró completely separated from the leading pair. Out in front, Márquez and Terol were to play for victory and behind them Espargaró, Smith, Cortese and Vázquez were to fight to the finish-line for the third step of the podium.
Márquez had the race strategy defined with his team very clear in his mind: keep up the pace at the start and wait for the tyres to start to wear to put the pressure on in the second half of the race. Taking turns with Terol to lead, Alzamora’s protégé picked up a few details about specific points of the track from behind the Valencian, improving his line in some areas, such as turn 12.
With five laps to go, Márquez changed the pace, riding several laps in the low 1 minute and 43 seconds and Terol was finally unable to keep up with his pace. Marc made a definitive break towards a new victory, the sixth of the season, extending his lead in the standings. With this win, Terol’s second and Espargaró’s sixth, Márquez stays at the top of the standings, 9 points clear of Nico Terol and 20 clear of Espargaró.
Marc Márquez, 1st 39’56.117 sec. >> Audio
“To be honest, competing with Nico [Terol] is fun because he is a clean rider and knows how to understand races. Both Nico and I knew that this race was going to be a fight between him and me. We tackled it very well, clearly, and knew that we had to let the first few laps pass by because with new tyres I didn’t feel as comfortable as after ten or fifteen laps. Midway through the race, he let me pass and I did a few laps to try to break up the group because he had made a huge effort and it seemed that he was going to catch up again. Then, I let him pass again, switching the lead between us, to play our best hand in the last few laps, when I knew it was time to attack. This race tastes sweeter than a victory because we’ve had two weekends in which luck seemed to be against us and despite doing a good job, the race results were not those we expected. This win gives both me and the team confidence”.
