Repsol Honda’s Marc Marquez could not hide his delight when the chequered flag appeared and he crossed the MotoGP finishing line at a rainy Assen in second place.
For the Spaniard the second place felt ‘like a victory’ and it showed with the youngster celebrating like he won maximum points when he hadn’t. Marquez now extends his lead in the championship by 24 points over rival, Movistar Yamaha’s Jorge Lorenzo, who could only finish tenth this afternoon.
Marquez’s other title challenger, Valentino Rossi crashed out whilst in the lead, and there is a 42 point gap between the duelling pair. Marquez’s Honda crew just wanted him to finish the race, and he did just that. He did not want to lose any points in what was deemed an ‘important’ race for the former champ.
In the end the eventual race winner was Jack Miller and Marquez was careful not to push too hard or make a challenge on the Australian that would result in a crash, but he stayed on his RC213V and came away from the Dutch round with a solid points haul.
“Honestly I feel it’s like a victory because you know this kind of race in the championship you can lose many points or gain many points. My mentality was to go out and try and finish the race. My team say to me 40 times this morning, please finish the race, please finish the race, and I say I understand,” said Marquez, at the circuit.
“Today it is an important race, we gained and we were lucky because also the mentality helped us a lot. I didn’t care about other riders but just do my race and to feel my bike and feel my limit. In the second race I felt a bit better with my bike than the first one but Jack was fast and congrats to him, as he was riding good in the wet.”
