Marquez romps to another America victory

Honda’s Marc Marquez virtually cruised to his win at the weekend at the Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas.

Andrea Dovizioso made the holeshot, and held the lead for the opening couple of laps  but on lap five it was Marquez who’d decided enough was enough then blasted past the Italian and cleared off to open up a five second lead.

Marquez has won every MotoGP race CoTA, since 2013 when the first race was held there nobody else has got on top of the podium. He said: “I decided to keep calm in the early laps to try to understand the situation well, and when I started to find a feeling similar to practice, I decided to push the pace a bit. That was when I was able to open up a gap.”

Behind the calmness of Marquez was a raging battle for second between Dovizioso and Valentino Rossi, the riders almost hit each other during the battle.

Rossi eventually lost out to Dovizioso because of a grip problem – but managed to hold onto his championship lead overall. He said: “I’m happy about the weekend, because getting onto the podium is a good objective when coming here. On paper this track is the worst for our bike. I am satisfied about the weekend as a whole because we were always in the top 4-5 and we also weren‘t so bad on the wet. For it to be perfect I would have had to beat Dovizioso, but unfortunately he was a bit faster. I didn‘t have a chance to try, also because after six or seven laps of pushing a lot, I had to ride very smooth. For some reason our bike destroyed the front tyre.

“Dovi said to me that we risked a lot overtaking in turn 12. From the bike I didn‘t feel it and I thought we had some margin. We passed each other very closely, but there was enough space.”

Dovizioso added: “It was really special to get the podium as it confirmed our pace at a completely different track. It was a really strange race, as you have to manage the tyres, the speed and the energy, and it was very difficult but I managed it in a perfect way, Marc was just on a different level.

“(About the near miss with Rossi) I thought that we would both crash, as he cut the line too much and I couldn’t reduce speed quick enough, it was very close, but that’s racing.”