MARC OF A CHAMPION
MOTOGP Marquez is homing in on crown
MARC MARQUEZ took charge of the chase for the MotoGP crown with a winning ride in his home race.
The Spanish rider went into the Aragon race level on points with rival Andrea Dovizioso.
But while Repsol Honda rider Marquez charged to a fifth victory of the season his Ducati rival lost ground, finishing back in seventh.
That means Marquez now leads by 16 points heading into the final four races of the season and is odds on to take the title for a fourth time.
Delight
Marquez said: “Every race is very important and this was a really difficult one as from the beginning I didn’t have the same feeling with the bike that I had in the warm-up.
“It was difficult to find the best compromise with the tyres but it was amazing to win in front of all of the fans and very important for the championship.”
He certainly gave those fans a highoctane mix of despair and delight as he came through a typical weekend bouncing back from crashes to victory.
Marquez, 24, tipped off twice during free practice and qualifying, the latter leaving him with a second row start to the race. Former champion Jorge Lorenzo forged clear from the start, amazingly with Valentino Rossi running him close as he raced little more than three weeks after having surgery to pin his broken right leg.
The Movistar Yamaha rider had defied all the odds to ride and braved the pain to finish fifth.
Rossi was targeted by Marquez, once he had picked off Dovizioso, and the young Spaniard tried a daring move at one-third distance to charge from third to first.
He dived through Rossi and then ® Lorenzo but ran wide, with his feet coming off the pegs, and had to regroup back in third place.
But six laps later he moved ahead of Rossi and then closed in on Lorenzo, taking the lead with eight laps remaining to win by 0.879secs from team-mate Dani Pedrosa.
Lorenzo had to settle for third, matching his best result of a difficult season on the Ducati.
Cal Crutchlow, at one point seventh on his LCR Honda, crashed out at two-thirds distance while Scott Redding, 14th, scraped into the points on the Pramac Ducati. YESTERDAY’S International Gold Cup motorcycle meeting at Oliver’s Mount, Scarborough, was abandoned after eight spectators and a rider were injured in two separate crashes at Drury’s Hairpin.
The first left one fan seriously injured while the second saw two spectators and the rider taken to hospital.