Assen: MotoGP world champion Marc Marquez made it eight wins in eight races with victory for Honda in a wet and dry Dutch TT in Assen yesterday.
After a brief rain delay, and a change of bikes mid-race, the 21-year-old Spaniard finished 6.7 seconds ahead of Ducati’s Andrea Dovizioso to become the first rider since Giacomo Agostini in 1971 to win the first eight races of a season.
He is also the youngest rider ever to win eight top-category races in a row, taking the record from the late Briton Mike Hailwood who was 24 when he did it in 1964.
Marquez now has a perfect 200 points, with Italian Valentino Rossi and Spain’s Dani Pedrosa level on 128.
Pedrosa, Marquez’s Honda team-mate, finished third with riders changing to bikes with a dry set-up and slick tyres on the seventh of the 26 laps after it had rained just before the start.
Spain’s Aleix Espargaro, who was on pole for the first time with his non-works Yamaha team but lost out at the start, took fourth place ahead of Rossi — starting from the pitlane — in fifth.
Marquez and Dovizioso traded the lead four times on the opening lap with the Spaniard sliding off after the change of bikes, allowing the Italian back in front before reasserting himself with 10 laps remaining.
“It was a tough day because this was a race where I could have lost many points, but we were still able to extend our lead in the Championship,” said Marquez.
“It was our first experience of a race like this, with both wet and dry conditions, and we even had a little scare after the bike change.”
Spain’s double world champion Jorge Lorenzo had a bad afternoon, finishing 13th after leaving it late to switch to slicks.
Marquez’s younger brother Alex made it a double celebration for the family by winning the Moto3 race. Alex Rins and Miguel Oliveira joined him on the podium after crashes for championship frontrunners Jack Miller (Red Bull KTM Ajo) and Romano Fenati (SKY Racing Team VR46).
Marquez built on his Barcelona win with another dominant performance to take victory by three seconds, leading for the majority of the race from second on the grid. His team-mate Rins briefly challenged him for the lead but the younger Marquez brother eventually had too much for his compatriot over the course of the 22 laps. AGENCIES
