Marc Marquez knew he had to beat Valentino Rossi at his home MotoGP at Aragon today to stop The Doctor closing in on the title.

The Spaniard took a solid win in front of his home crowd despite a moment in the third lap where he almost crashed and ended up dropping to fifth.

But the Repsol Honda man regained composure and control as he settled into the 23 lap race and was quickly on the comeback charge, taking the lead on the 12th lap and eventually winning by 2.740 over Jorge Lorenzo.

And he says he knew he had to win, to give Rossi – who followed his Movistar Yamaha team-mate over the line third - less of a chance of catching him in the closing rounds.

“I tried to lead the race to open a gap, but I had a big moment on turn seven,” he said. “I was already on the floor but I don’t know why I save the crash and after that I say, ‘okay, quiet’.

“Step by step I gained positions, I gained time against Valentino and when I catch him, I just relaxed on one lap and then when I overtook, I attacked and I was able to open a gap, enough for to win the race.”

It was enough to stretch his lead in the series to 52 points, which he feels is a decent cushion going into the Far East rounds in three weeks’ time.

“It was important, this victory. It was important because since Germany, but especially Austria, that if was a dry race we cannot win again. The second point also is it was important because the second rider, in this case was Valentino, was catching me step by step.

“It was important to stop him because if not, his mentality is going up, up, up and we start to have some doubts, but after this victory I feel again good on the bike. It’s a nice advantage but like we see today, we must be very very concentrated because to crash is really easy.”