Round 12 British MotoGP: Marquez emerges victorious in spectacular Spanish duel at Silverstone – 1st Marquez, 2nd Lorenzo, 3rd Rossi

For the second consecutive year the British Grand Prix was the venue for a spectacular duel between Repsol Honda’s Marc Marquez and Movistar Yamaha MotoGP’s Jorge Lorenzo, but this year it was Marquez who was the victor at Silverstone as the reigning World Champion beat his Spanish rival to the chequered flag.

The battle between Marquez and Lorenzo lasted almost the whole race and resulted in the winning race time being the quickest ever recorded at the Silverstone circuit. After trading the race lead a few times, Marquez managed to pull a small gap on the final lap to beat Lorenzo to the finish line by 0.732 seconds. On the other Movistar Yamaha MotoGP M1 Valentino Rossi was able to resist the challenge of Repsol Honda’s Dani Pedrosa and Ducati Team’s Andrea Dovizioso to take third place. 

After cool conditions for the first two days of the race weekend, Sunday presented much warmer conditions resulting in a peak track temperature of 34°C recorded at the start of the race; 4°C warmer than any other session this weekend. Although the soft compound rear slick was preferred by the vast majority of riders in the cooler temperatures, the warmer weather today saw a shift in front tyre choice for the race with ten of the twenty-three riders deciding to use the medium compound front, with the remaining thirteen riders deciding to keep using the soft compound front slick. The welcome rise in track temperature today wasn’t significant enough to have an influence on rear tyre choice for the race with all except four riders deciding to use the softer rear slick compound available to them; medium for the Factory Honda and Yamaha riders, and soft for the Ducati and Open-class entrants.

Courtesy of his eleventh win of the season Marquez now extends his lead over his teammate Pedrosa in the standings to eighty-nine points, while Rossi remains in third on the championship table but closes the gap to Pedrosa to just ten points with six rounds remaining the 2014 MotoGP™ season.

Shinji Aoki – Manager, Bridgestone Motorcycle Tyre Development Department

“Conditions for the race were the warmest for the entire race weekend and this had quite an influence on race tyre choice, particularly for the factory riders. Although most riders preferred to use the soft compound front slick on the previous days, the higher track temperatures this afternoon resulted in many of the factory riders choosing to use the medium compound front slick for the race, which was the hardest front slick we brought here this weekend. Despite the warmer temperatures, the softer rear slick options were still used by almost every rider and overall, tyre performance was consistent over the twenty laps. Our tyre allocation performed very well this weekend and the average speed for this year’s race was the fastest ever recorded at Silverstone which was a pleasing result for us.”

Marc Marquez, Repsol Honda – Race Winner

“Today I didn’t expect for Jorge to be so strong. I had the same rhythm as FP4 but he was pushing a lot at the beginning. I was trying to manage my tyres at the start but I had to stay with him otherwise he could open up a gap. In the second part of the race my rhythm was slightly better and in the end it was nice to come back and win here.”