Marquez: “Unfortunately we touched and I crashed…”

The Repsol rider had dominated the first half of the race, but later lost his lead and saw a collision with the Italian on the penultimate lap send him to the ground.

Marquez started from pole position and quickly tried to establish a gap, opening a lead of four-seconds over second place. However, in the second half of the race he was unable to keep up the pace and Rossi – running a harder compound tire – caught up with him with three laps to go. One lap later he fended off a move from Rossi, but when Marquez tried to regain position from a second attempt he collided with his rival. The impact sent the reigning World Champion to the ground and ended his race prematurely.

Marc Marquez:

“It’s a shame what happened, because we were having a good race! It was interesting, because our tyre choice was different from Valentino’s as I felt we were not as competitive the harder compound,” Marquez said.

“The strategy was working out well for us – it’s just a pity about the last two laps. When I saw that he was closing in on me, I decided to conserve the tyres a little. On the final laps I went back to riding in the low 1’39s to check that the tyres were still in good shape, and knew that we would be fighting to the end. When he caught me, we fought for a few corners and unfortunately we touched and I crashed. I’ve always said that he’s my idol and my reference, so you always learn things from him. Now we have to think about Jerez and begin to recover points.”