Dani Pedrosa moves from eleventh to fourth at French Grand Prix, whilst Marc Marquez suffers a crash and places thirteenth.
The Repsol Honda riders experienced mixed fortunes at the French Grand Prix, which took place this Sunday at Le Mans. Dani Pedrosa -who had started from eleventh on the grid- produced a great comeback and eventually finished fourth, just off the podium. Teammate Marc Marquez did not enjoy such a positive race, crashing on Lap 16 when riding in fourth place and closing in on the Top 3. The Repsol Honda rider picked his bike back up and showed pride to rejoin the race, crossing the line in thirteenth. The result gives him three points for this overall tally, which could be vital at the end of the season.
Following the fifth round of the 2016 season, Marquez occupies second place in the MotoGP World Championship with 85 points -5 off leader Jorge Lorenzo- and Pedrosa is fourth with 53 points.
Marc Marquez >> Audio
“It was a pity about the crash today. I was having a good race, but these things can happen when you’re at the limit on every lap. I could have opted for a more conservative race, but here you can end up far back if you do that, so today I had to take risks. In the race I saw that I was losing ground under acceleration, and I had to make that back with my braking. Finally I lost the front and crashed. The positive is that I managed to get three points and I’m only five off Jorge Lorenzo in the standings, which isn’t a lot. Now we have a run of tracks that we found a little tough last year, but they’re quite different to Jerez and Le Mans, so I hope to be fast and have some good races.”
Dani Pedrosa >> Audio
“I cannot feel satisfied with today’s fourth place because obviously I would prefer be much higher up the order and have better races. I give my all, but the conditions are not always there to do well. We are also making some mistakes, and one that is hurting us most is in qualifying, because starting far back makes things more difficult in the race. At the beginning of the race today we did not have good grip and it was hard to get enough of a feeling to go a little faster. The second part of the race went better, and there were some laps in which I even rode quicker than Rossi’s pace, but it was too late. What makes a difference is starting well, starting high up on the grid and putting in good opening laps.”
