On Saturday, the 20-year-old Repsol Honda Team rookie achieved a second pole position. At the start on Sunday, he was caught out by wheelspin on a damp track and dropped to ninth position, but went on to take advantage of incidents in front of him and passed numerous rivals including Ducati Team’s Andrea Dovizioso.

“It was so difficult, especially in the beginning with that water on the track,” Marquez recalled. “I had only ridden a few laps in the wet, at Jerez. First I made a big mistake with wheelspin at the start, so I’ll take a lot of experience from that! In the beginning I maybe tried to push too much and made many, many mistakes and lost lots of time.

“I took the feeling I had had in the Warm-Up and came back through. I didn’t expect to finish on the podium, if I’m honest, but I was just focussed on my race. I saw Cal was there on the last lap but I said, ‘Okay, after this race the podium is enough!’ These 16 points are so important because this was my first MotoGP™ race in the wet and to start the championship with four podiums in a row is quite important.”

For the first time since Qatar, Marquez is no longer the championship leader. He now sits six points behind today’s race winner and teammate Dani Pedrosa.

via MotoGP