Marquez 'rode with championship in mind'

Marc Marquez erred on the side of caution as he claimed second place in the Catalunya MotoGP.

Marquez had been pushing hard to hang on to eventual winner Jorge Lorenzo but decided to take a more measured approach after a front-end slide as he completed the race with the championship in mind.

The Repsol Honda rider is now 27 points ahead of Valentino Rossi and edged further ahead of Andrea Dovizioso, who was amongst the fallers on his Ducati.

Marquez said: “My strategy was clear, just trying to be really focused on the start to take the lead because I chose the hard-hard and it was difficult on the first lap to warm them.

“I was waiting for Jorge to overtake me and already on the first straight he overtook. Then I tried to follow him and I was pushing a lot because my mentality was to try to follow him to open a gap over the others.

“I was able, but in one moment I lost the front in the same lap that Dovi crashed, so then I started to see many yellow flags in the circuit, many crashes, and after Mugello it was something that I needed some confidence and this weekend we already crashed two times and had a big save in the last corner, so it was time to finish the race,” Marquez added.

“It is 20 points and then on the last laps I tried to keep pushing to see if Lorenzo dropped on the tyres, but we were dropping in the same way so then I just managed the race with Valentino (Rossi) and finished the race in second place.”

Marquez said Dovizioso’s misfortune had no bearing on his race strategy as he was already focused solely on his own objective.

“It didn’t change because my strategy was clever and I was so focused just on my riding and forget the others,” he said.

“When you finish in second place, inside my mind you are missing something, but if you check the championship we keep the advantage and now we are 27 points in front, so happy because the worst result of this year is second place and the other is because I crashed, so we need to manage this and be constant on the podium.”