MotoGP: Marquez’s race ‘exactly like last year’

Marc Marquez says this year’s Qatar Grand Prix brought back memories of last year’s duel for him, after he got beaten for the second year in a row in a last corner duel with Andrea Dovizioso. But while he might have beaten into second place by Dovizioso, he says he’s happy with the outcome.

“It was exactly the same as last year! I tried to push hard but here when you overtake you just run wide and you can’t keep the line. I tried to be there, to push a little and just be there until the end. I’m very happy with these 20 points because normally we struggle here and this weekend especially we worked a lot. We changed some things that meant I couldn’t push like I normally do in braking. But we finished the race and take good points.”

And new teammate Jorge Lorenzo also walks away positive about his first race as a Repsol Honda rider, despite being hampered by mechanical and physical problems back into 13^th place.

“There are many positive things today even if where we finished is not what we thought we could achieve. I was very limited by the crash yesterday, it was a very big impact everywhere and especially on my shoulder. It limited everything. From then, I was always slower than at the start of the weekend. I was limited by the clutch, too. We tried to change it to have more margin on the start, but it was a problem because it was slipping and spinning from the warmup lap and I ended up going backwards to almost last position right from the start. Without that, I could have been in the top ten.”