Turning on the winning-mode

Last Sunday, all eyes were pointed at the great American country, more specifically at Austin. The tension rose with the fact that Marquez wanted his revenge for Qatar and with Rossi who desires to hold his leaders position. And then our Ducati team… will they be as dangerous as they were two weeks ago? Will Lorenzo manage to take his first victory, even with his bronchitis? We did missed someone on the grid. Dani Pedrosa is recovering from his surgery after having troubles with his arm pump. Take care Dani!

But that didn’t hold the Honda team back from having a good start. Marquez took the pole position and broke the record lap. Dovizioso was qualified 2^nd and Lorenzo filled in the first row. Rossi had to start form 4^th pace on the grid.

There was a delayed start. (delayed for 40min)

It was Dovizioso who took the hole shot and the 21-laps during fight for honor had started. For some riders, the first round wasn’t exactly according to the plan. Scott Redding drove like a mad man into the trickiest turn of the circuit, crashed and took Pol Espargaro with him.

It didn’t took long before Marquez found his way to the front of the group. It wasn’t easy to lose the rapid Dovizioso, but slowly, thanks to a fight between the two Italians, Rossi and Dovi, he was able to escape. Rossi felt the coming danger called Smith and pushed his Yamaha with perfection through the sliding corners and eventually overtook Dovi. But it was too late.The only thing Rossi saw was a shrinking Spanish butt.

Up to the next goal: keeping the two Ducati’s behind him. But another enemy showed up. His front tire was used up. The same problem for Marquez, but because of a 3.5s gap, he was pretty save.

Rossi had to take his corners very wide so Dovizioso had time to come back and when it came to speed, the Ducati was unstoppable. 

And eventually, Marquez won his first victory of the season. Dovizioso took the 2^nd step on the podium and Rossi completed the top 3 and remains leader. Lorenzo had a better 2^nd half and was able to gain 4^th place. Iannone became 5^th. Aoyama, who took the place of Pedrosa, ended up 11^th. There was a crash of Hernandez and a defect bike of Abraham.

Has Marc Marquez found the taste of winning back and should the other riders be scared again? Anyway, the Baby Alien can now celebrate his third consecutive win from pole position at the #AmericasGP 

Merel Reyntjens