MotoGP Brno: Marquez wins flag-to-flag Czech GP

It might seem a forgone thing, that Marquez picked up where he left off, but it wasn’t so. He took a risk and chose the soft compound for the start, but ended up going backwards almost immediately – the soft doesn’t work very well with his aggressive riding style. Full marks to Honda for having a bike with the dry setup ready for him as soon as he pitted – this enabled him to open up a 19 second lead at one point on the drying racing line. Behind him, everyone had the same reason: they pitted too late. Teammate Dani Pedrosa also pitted early and brought it home in second.

Maverick Vinales managed to salvage what was a terrible weekend up to that point with the final spot on the podium. His team mate, Valentino Rossi, dropped all the way to 14th place on lap six but managed to claw his way back up the order to fourth place. Cal Crutchlow managed fifth place even though he had a fractured vertebra. Sixth and seventh were the Ducati GP17s of Dovizioso and Petrucci, Dovi falling victim to poor planning by the Ducati Corse team. At least it wasn’t as bad as Lorenzo’s situation, who stood for 15 seconds while the team prepared the second bike, and eventually handed him one that was set up half for dry and half for wet. The result? 15th place. Aleix Espargaro had a brilliant race but an incident in the pit lane with Andrea Iannone gave him a three-position penalty, and he eventually finished in eighth. His brother Pol Espargaro brought KTM a good result with ninth place. Jonas Folger was first of the Tech 3 Yamahas in tenth, one of the rare occasions where he finished ahead of team mate Johann Zarco. The full list is as below:

1. Marc Marquez, Honda

2. Dani Pedrosa, Honda

3. Maverick Vinales, Yamaha

4. Valentino Rossi, Yamaha

5. Cal Crutchlow, LCR Honda

6. Andrea Dovizioso, Ducati

7. Danilo Petrucci, Pramac Ducati

8. Aleix Espargaro, Aprilia

9. Pol Espargaro, KTM

10. Jonas Folger, Tech 3 Yamaha

11. Alex Rins, Suzuki

12. Johann Zarco, Tech 3 Yamaha