I’m happy to be back in the championship.
Marc Márquez takes his ninth victory in the United States. He has 5 to his name at Austin, 3 at Indianapolis and 1 in Laguna Seca.
With this result, Marc Márquez lies third in the overall standings with 38 points.
Dani Pedrosa takes the lead on the opening corner, having started the race from fourth. He led the contest until Lap 9.
Marc Márquez
This was a crucial race because after Argentina it was important to come back in the best way, so we are really happy with this result. Although I won, it was difficult, because the temperature was much higher than yesterday. Five minutes before the start, I said to my chief mechanic, ‘Okay, let’s use the hard tyre’ because I knew that I would push the medium front tyre a lot. In the beginning I was just trying to understand the limit because I hadn’t tried it a lot on Friday. I was behind Dani and when I saw that he was struggling a little bit and Valentino was challenging, I said, ‘Time to attack.’ I was able to win, and I’m happy to be back in the championship.
Dani Pedrosa
I’m happy because we made some steps forward today, and overall this weekend was positive. We made some good improvements from the last races, and also in practice we were higher up in the results. Qualifying still wasn’t as good as I’d have liked, but today were able to get a good start and arrive first to turn one. It was the first time I’ve done that in a while, and I led the race for a few laps, which is good. In the end it was difficult to manage the front tyre. I could feel that the right side was finished, so I couldn’t prevent Valentino from passing me. After the crash in Argentina, I wanted to avoid losing the front, so I just tried to finish.