After winning yesterday’s Austin GP and breaking both of Freddie Spencer’s records in just one weekend, Marc Marquez was described in many ways not only be fans, but also by his fellow riders and rivals, who gave him accolades with ‘extraordinary’, ’super’ and ‘phenomenal’ and veteran rider Valentino Rossi who has a soft spot for the rookie was one of the first to congratulate him.
“Already third place in Qatar was a dream, and now victory in my second race is even better! I am very grateful to the team for their efforts over the pre-season; we have worked very hard and, without this, the victory would not have been possible.
The race was very intense and physical.
I followed Dani for many laps and then decided to launch an attack and try to open a gap with ten laps to go.
I could not pull the gap I wanted as some problems with the front emerged that we hadn’t experienced throughout the weekend.
Despite all this, we were able to take the victory.
The 25 points are important, but what is more important is to have achieved a win in my second race in MotoGP.
We realise that more difficult circuits lie ahead for us, but we will try to give 100% at all of them.
Our battle is not the one for the championship, but rather taking it race-by-race and enjoying every moment,” said an estatic Marquez.
Despite journalists wanting to cause friction rivalry between Dani Pedrosa and Marquez, the veteran rider didn’t take the bait and despite ending up behind his team mate for the second time, this time Pedrosa was much happier with his result, even if he suffered arm issues (his size didn’t help on a physically demanding track like Austin) and then an error forced him out of straight up final battle with Marquez.
“I’m happy with this second place.
We had great pace, even though we knew that Marc was very strong.
There were no tactics.
I tried to ride my own race but in the end I was losing a lot of time on the chicanes.
I was tiring physically.
I had some pain in my left arm and I could not handle the bike well – especially in the first part of the circuit.
In the second section of the track I was recovering quite a lot of time, but it was not enough.
Furthermore, in one of the three laps before the end I made a mistake, lost around 1.
5 seconds and Marc was able to get away.
That was the point at which the race was lost for me.
Still, I’m happy with the bike, my riding was pretty good today and I have improved compared with Qatar.
I have to congratulate Marc as well, the Superstar of the season.
Now we need to focus on Jerez – a circuit I like a lot, ” said Pedrosa.