Both Dani Pedrosa and Marc Marquez suffered attention-grabbing moments en route to their second and third positions in Sunday’s Gran Premi Aperol de Catalunya.
Pedrosa would finish second in his 200th Grand Prix, having started from pole position. However he was struggling with tyres during the second half of the race.
“Today was a bit of a strange race,” he said. “We could not get maximum performance and physically it was very hard, because of the heat of the bike and the tyres. When I tried to open the throttle the bike wobbled in the front and I had to be very careful. We three front-runners were battling the track conditions today.
“It was a bit disappointing not to be able to push more, since the differences between us all was minimal. We rode practically the entire race without any overtaking. It was very easy to make a mistake and in fact, on the closing laps, Marc made one and I had a slide, but in the end we were able to take a very important second place.”
Marquez was relieved to avoid contact with his teammate in a Turn 4 lunge on the penultimate tour, but would finish on the podium from sixth on the grid.
“It was a difficult race,” began the 20-year-old. “We expected it to be tough, but we never imagined that we would be fighting for the podium with Jorge (Lorenzo) and Dani and I'm very happy with this result! It gives us confidence after a slightly tricky weekend, as in the end we found the ideal setup.
“During the race I learned a lot from riding behind Dani, trying to figure out how to ride a MotoGP bike at this track, and in the end we did quite well. We knew it would be difficult to finish in the top five, but we managed to get on the podium. I can only say I'm thrilled with the result. Now we look to Assen and we'll see if we can improve anything for that race during the test at Aragon.”
Six races into the campaign, Pedrosa’s lead has been reduced to seven points over Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha Factory Racing and Sunday’s race winner), whereas third-placed Marquez’s number of points now matches the 93 of his bike number.
source : motogp.com
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