Marquez: Title at Motegi exactly what I wanted

Newly-crowned MotoGP World champion Marc Marquez says Sunday’s race at Motegi in Japan was exactly the outcome he had hoped for.

The Repsol Honda rider sealed his third premier class title at Honda’s home race with a victory – his eighth of the season – to wrap up the championship in style with three rounds remaining.

It was his fifth MotoGP crown and his seventh world championship success overall.

Marquez’s job was made simpler after Ducati’s Andrea Dovizioso slid off on the penultimate lap when he was tight to his Honda rival’s rear wheel, leaving the Spaniard clear at the front.

“I feel really happy and the race was exactly what I had in my mind. Yesterday, after the qualifying, I tried to analyse and understand,” said Marquez, who qualified sixth fastest.

“I knew that the pace of FP4 was really good and in warm-up I reconfirmed with the used tyres. Before the race, we planned the race like always and we tried to understand which was the real possibility, and we saw that we had exactly the same pace as Dovi.

“But I was starting in sixth place and I told myself I have to be in a perfect way in the first lap, riding in a perfect shape and a perfect rhythm,” he added. “Already at the end of the first lap I was second behind Dovi and that was the main target. Then I tried to study, tried to analyse, and I saw that I was strong enough to fight with him until the end.”

Marquez said he adopted the same strategy that he used in Thailand, outlining his plan to overtake Dovizioso before the final lap.

“I tried to attack when there remained nine or ten laps and I made a small mistake with the grass, but then Dovi overtook me again and he started to push really hard. I was able to follow him in a good way and then I attacked before the last lap,” Marquez said.

“It was the same strategy as Thailand and I saw that before the last lap, he had more chance to win because he was riding faster on acceleration, but when I saw he was out on the last lap, my first thought was that I was very happy.

“I won the title, but then when I think, I was disappointed because he deserves to be here too. He did an incredible season and an incredible race.”