Home News Motorsports Marc Marquez back to his winning ways at Silverstone

Marc Marquez back to his winning ways at Silverstone

September 1, 2014

For the second consecutive year the British Grand Prix was the venue for a spectacular duel between Repsol Honda’s Marc Marquez and Movistar Yamaha MotoGP’s Jorge Lorenzo, but this year it was Marquez who was the victor at Silverstone as the reigning World Champion beat his Spanish rival to the chequered flag. The battle between Marquez and Lorenzo lasted almost the whole race and resulted in the winning race time being the quickest ever recorded at the Silverstone circuit. After trading the race lead a few times, Marquez managed to pull a small gap on the final lap to beat Lorenzo to the finish line by 0.732 seconds. On the other Movistar Yamaha MotoGP M1 Valentino Rossi was able to resist the challenge of Repsol Honda’s Dani Pedrosa and Ducati Team’s Andrea Dovizioso to take third place.

After cool conditions for the first two days of the race weekend, Sunday presented much warmer conditions resulting in a peak track temperature of 34°C recorded at the start of the race; 4°C warmer than any other session this weekend. Although the soft compound rear slick was preferred by the vast majority of riders in the cooler temperatures, the warmer weather today saw a shift in front tyre choice for the race with ten of the twenty-three riders deciding to use the medium compound front, with the remaining thirteen riders deciding to keep using the soft compound front slick. The welcome rise in track temperature today wasn’t significant enough to have an influence on rear tyre choice for the race with all except four riders deciding to use the softer rear slick compound available to them; medium for the Factory Honda and Yamaha riders, and soft for the Ducati and Open-class entrants.

Courtesy of his eleventh win of the season Marquez now extends his lead over his teammate Pedrosa in the standings to eighty-nine points, while Rossi remains in third on the championship table but closes the gap to Pedrosa to just ten points with six rounds remaining the 2014 MotoGP season.

Marc Marquez

“I’m very happy with this win! I expected the race to be slightly different, given what happened in practice yesterday, but today with higher temperatures it seems that both Jorge [Lorenzo] and Valentino [Rossi] took a step forward. Above all, Jorge, because he had a great pace and we were fighting right to the end. It was important to win today, after missing out at Brno. I also had a score to settle from last year, when Jorge beat me on the final corner, so I am happy to be back on the top step of the podium!”

Jorge Lorenzo

“Knowing what this weekend was like, this race is much better than we expected. I made a really good start and pushed 100%, more than ever, so I am really proud of my riding. The only thing is that here we probably don’t have the best package. Though we did a really good job improving little by little and practice by practice, we were not able to have the same confortable pace as Marc. I was pushing a lot and maybe he was able to relax a little bit more. I was struggling a lot with my physical condition to keep the bike on two wheels and being able to ride these lap times. Finally I lost a lot of time when he touched me. I knew that he was going to try to overtake me in this corner in first gear on the right, but I didn’t let him enter. On the outside I opened the throttle and he touched me. In the next corner he touched me again as he went into the corner and I lost seven tenths of a second. We started the weekend 1.3 seconds slower than Marc and we finished the weekend with being just 7 tenths slower than Marc after twenty laps. That’s fantastic! Thanks to a very good job from my team, all together we improved the bike. I rode well from the first corner to the last one and I did my best. Unfortunately you can’t ride the Yamaha as aggressively as our rivals. You have to open your lines more else you lose corner speed. That’s a difference, but we have our strong points and they have theirs. It’s just unfortunate that in the braking areas it makes it a little harder to fight for me. We will try to improve the bike and win races.“

Valentino Rossi

“I’m happy for the podium. It’s the first time here at Silverstone and usually this is a very difficult track for me. I am very happy about my pace at the beginning, because Jorge was in front and pushing a lot, so the lap times were very fast. I was able to stay with them for the first laps, but unfortunately I had already a small gap when I was behind Dovizioso. To try and catch them I stressed the rear tyre too much, so I had too slow my rhythm and from that moment I started a very hard battle with Dani and Dovi to the end. I decided to stay in front because I had a quite good pace and I could arrive on the podium. We have a lot of positive things. We have another podium. On the other side, I wanted to stay behind Marc and Jorge throughout the race. We have to do another step to prepare 100% for Misano in two weeks, because that will be my home Grand Prix and we will have to do more than the maximum.”

Dani Pedrosa

“Today’s race wasn’t easy. I had a bad start and on the opening laps I lost a little ground on the frontrunners, although to be honest I didn’t have the same pace as the leaders afterwards either. However, we fought with Valentino and Andrea and in the end we gained a place on the final lap. It hasn’t been our best weekend, but we will try to be back up at the front again at the next Grand Prix.”