with Twowheelsblog
Dani Pedrosa may not have won his 200th Grand Prix in Catalunya, but the Repsol Honda veteran was only mildly disappointed with his second place.
The track conditions were extreme and considering that the front of his Honda continued to close on him when he was hitting the corner apex whenever he pushed, he was content to finish second and keep his lead in the standings.
“Today was a bit of a strange race. 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,” said Pedrosa.
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.
Repsol Honda may not have brought home a victory, but they still had two riders on the podium, and no one was more surprised than Marc Marquez who took a third place podium.
The MotoGP rookie is a race animal, and was the only rider who actually livened up a dull race in the finale, when he attempted to get past his team mate in the penultimate lap and to avoid hitting him braked so hard that his bike shuddered.
A candid Marquez admitted that he tried the pass in the wrong place, “I thought I was stronger there, but on that lap Dani also braked quite hard. I nearly crashed and lost too much time. We didn’t touch but it was very, very close. I already said to him, ‘when you see the video - sorry!’
Talking about the race he said, “It was a difficult race. 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.”
