Sunday didn’t get off to the best start for Marc Marquez (Repsol Honda Team), the Spaniard suffering a huge fall during morning Warm Up. He was declared fit for the race, but he’d clearly taken a beating in the fall. As the GoPro Motorrad Grand Prix Deutschland got under way he seemed to be suffering, dropping out of the podium contest before running off at Turn 8. He would reveal after the race that his choice of the extra-soft front tyre was the wrong one of his riding style and the cause of his early issues. With this Marquez had nothing to lose and waited for even the smallest hint of a dry line to swap bikes and tyres.
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Lap 13 proved to be the perfect time to change to slicks, Marquez flying as the dry line grew. He had to take a lot of risks, but his lap times were soon four seconds faster than those on wets battling for the lead. With five laps to go Marquez took the lead and never looked back, cruising to his seventh win in seven years at the Sachsenring. More important than a flawless German record was what his victory did for the championship standings. Marquez heads into the summer break with a 48-point lead over Jorge Lorenzo (Movistar Yamaha MotoGP) after he took just a single point for 15th. History suggests that the rider leading after Sachsenring will go on to win the championship, so will it be MotoGP™ World Championship number three for Marquez in 2016?
Marc Marquez: “At a certain point today, I thought my run at this circuit was going to come to an end, but in the end we succeeded and earned a very good result, especially considering how Valentino [Rossi] and Jorge [Lorenzo] finished the race. I’m very happy with how we worked with the team today: they did a great job preparing my bike after my crash in the warm-up, and then in the race our strategy proved to be perfect. It was a very difficult race, with it being flag-to-flag and the track conditions so delicate. In the first part of the race, in the wet, I found things a little difficult.
“I had picked the wrong front tyre for my riding style, but I was able to switch to slicks. I was very careful in the opening laps after changing bikes, because the dry line was very narrow and there was still a lot of water on the surface. It’s always very difficult to decide when to change bikes, and perhaps we made our switch very early—I think I was the second rider to do so—but I decided to take a chance and it went well. We end the first half of the season with our homework done and off the back of a good race, but we must not forget to prepare well for the second half of the year.”
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