Home win seals Marquez’s redemption
MOTOGP JEREZ (ESP) 5 MAY ROUND 4/19 Marc Marquez had a point to prove at Jerez, after his golden run of dominance at the Circuit of The Americas in the previous Motogp round had come to a dramatic end when he crashed out – a mistake blamed on pilot error and a mechanical issue. So bulletproof was he at the venue previously, his mental state was called into question ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix. Now the Honda star had to ensure his rivals knew his confidence had not been dented, and that an exploitable weakness had not developed when he hit the Austin asphalt.
Wary that the opening 10 laps would be a pack race, Marquez ran with the Petronas SRT Yamaha duo of Franco Morbidelli and Fabio Quartararo – who had stripped Marquez of his youngest polesitter record 24 hours earlier – swarming behind him, safe in the knowledge that the race would come to him when grip started to fade.
On lap 10, he put his endgame into action. He raised his 0.9-second gap to Morbidelli to 1.7s, which extended by a further
0.1s when Quartararo carved past his
SRT team-mate for second at the newly renamed Pedrosa corner of Turn 6 on lap 11.
Quartararo looked set to offer up a possible challenge once clear of his team-mate, as he lapped within 0.250s of Marquez on the next two tours. But the rookie sensation’s dream weekend ended in heartbreak on lap 14 when the gear shifter on his customer Yamaha broke. Marquez now had 3.8s in hand – an identical advantage to the one he was enjoying at Austin when he fell.
If there was any doubt of where his head was at, a record 1m38.051s on the following lap dealt the final hammerblow. History would not repeat itself, and Marquez would not be caught. He cruised to his redemption and the lead in the standings.
Alex Rins ensured Marquez could only pull out a single-point lead. The Suzuki rider failed to make the qualifying gains he has been seeking this season, and was left to pick his way through traffic on the tight Jerez circuit from ninth on the grid. Lapping similarly to Marquez once through into second, Rins could well have been a contender for Suzuki’s first back-to-back wins since 1999 with a better Saturday.
Another rider hindered by a lacklustre qualifying was Valentino Rossi. Missing a place in Q2 by just 0.072s, the Yamaha rider faced an uphill struggle coming from 13th. He reckoned he could have challenged for the final podium slot alongside team-mate Maverick Vinales and the works Ducati pair had he been further up the grid. Now nine points adrift in the standings, sixth limited the damage significantly.
Rossi predicted Jerez would be the litmus test for Yamaha to gauge its progress from last year. Third for Vinales – who feels he has “recovered” confidence on the M1 bike, having kept pace with the leaders from the
off – and the strong SRT showing suggest Yamaha has just about scraped a pass.
Andrea Dovizioso was odds-on favourite to take the fight to Marquez, but the
Ducati’s deficit through fast corners remains and he could do nothing to advance on fourth, despite his best efforts to beat Vinales in the closing laps. Only three points down in the standings, his afternoon – as evidenced in last year’s race when he was wiped out of podium contention – could have been far worse. But worry remains that Ducati’s current level may not be enough to topple Marquez.
Danilo Petrucci shadowed team-mate Dovizioso by two seconds to secure a much-needed first top-five result of the year, as he enters what will surely be the make-or-break phase of the season in his bid to hold onto his factory seat for 2020.
Morbidelli compounded SRT’S trying day, as tyre woes dropped him to seventh, ahead of LCR Honda duo Cal Crutchlow and Takaaki Nakagami. HRC tester Stefan Bradl took 10th on his first wildcard of the year.
Bradl’s result proved humbling for Jorge Lorenzo. Adamant that Jerez – the scene of his first Ducati rostrum in 2017 – would signal the true start to his so-far-troubled debut Honda season, he instead lucked into a lowly 12th after KTM’S Pol Espargaro misread his pitboard and backed off a lap too early. With Lorenzo still complaining of a lack of “support” from the RC213V into corners, Honda clearly has a long way to go before its ‘dream team’ is fully operational. LEWIS DUNCAN