MotoGP: Marquez Crash Sequence

The Rio corner at Misano will not soon be forgotten by Repsol Honda’s reigning champion Marc Marquez who, in chasing down eventual winner Valentino Rossi, made an uncharacteristic technical error at turn 4 that resulted in the front end washing out. Hometown hero Rossi had taken the lead from his Movistar Yamaha teammate Jorge Lorenzo just three laps into the race.

After charging past the Ducatis from the second row, Marquez also worked past Lorenzo and was positioning himself for an assault on Rossi for the lead. However, as Marquez pushed to keep on pace with Rossi, he made a small mistake at a fairly low speed, with the bike spinning out. He was able to pick the bike up but had trouble getting it started again. The race marshals arrived and managed to bump start him, but by this point the pack had disappeared.

The runaway standings leader pushed hard to catch the back markers and was able to match the lap times being set by the front runners, but the distance was too great. Marquez managed to climb back to 15th and take one Championship point.

Marquez maintains his lead in the World Championship, but the gap is now decreased to 74 points over second placed Dani Pedrosa, who finished third in the race.

Looking at things from a positive perspective Marquez said, “I’m happy with how today went, despite the crash due to my first mistake of the season, because yesterday I did not think that I would be capable of sticking with Valentino and Jorge. They had a little bit more pace, and today we were able to get fairly close to them.”

“I saw the possibility of fighting with Valentino for the victory, but that was not possible in the end because of the mistake; I was riding over the inside of the rumble strip and that meant that I lost the front. Luckily I was able to rejoin the race, continue with a good pace and score a point that could always come in handy in the future.”