Podium Gran Premio Red Bull de la República Argentina

Argentina, Sunday, 27 April -An enthralling MotoGP™ race at the Gran Premio Red Bull de la Republica Argentina saw Marc Marquez clinch his third win of the year, ahead of Dani Pedrosa and Jorge Lorenzo in the top three.

As the race at Termas de Rio Hondo got underway Marquez got caught up in the crowd on lap one but played it patiently, picking off his opponents to get into second – eventually hunting down early leader Lorenzo, with his winning move coming 8 laps from the end.

Marc Marquez – “I am happy with how the weekend went in general and I’d like to thank all my team! I think it was a nice race for the fans, with plenty of passes and I wasn’t expecting it to be like that. As the race went on and I saw what the gap was to Jorge Lorenzo and I tried to catch up with him quickly and spend a few laps on his tail. When I saw that Dani [Pedrosa] was getting closer, I tried to overtake in order to maintain more of a gap. I took 25 more points today which are very important and I’ve put together three wins in a row, but we are aware that the season is very long and we are now heading to Jerez where Dani and Jorge are very fast. We will need to be up there with them, fighting for the win!”

It was a good day for the Repsol Honda team as Pedrosa stayed in the chase throughout the race, eventually overtaking Lorenzo on the penultimate lap for second.

Dani Pedrosa – “I enjoyed the race but after losing some time at the start it affected me and I found myself alone again. In the final part of the race I had a good pace and was able to recover places, but it didn’t count for much. I took second place, but with the pace that we had we could have pushed for the win. You always have to learn and maybe I saved my tyres too much when I was riding as part of the group. Fortunately we found a good setup that allowed us to be more competitive, and this is positive.”

Lorenzo’s Movistar Yamaha MotoGP teammate Valentino Rossi was briefly into second early on, but ran wide twice and dropped to seventh before fighting his way back up to fourth.

Solid runs from Stefan Bradl (LCR Honda MotoGP) and Andrea Iannone (Pramac Racing) saw them finish fifth and sixth – they were 15s and 19s respectively back on Marquez.

Monster Yamaha Tech3 teammates Bradley Smith and Pol Espargaro were safely inside the top ten, which was completed by Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team) and top ‘Open’ rider Hiroshi Aoyama (Drive M7 Aspar) – the Japanese competitor crossing the line 0.073s in front of colleague Nicky Hayden.

Aleix Espargaro (NGM Forward Racing) was 15th after an early crash, whilst there was another DNF for Alvaro Baustista (GO&FUN Honda Gresini) who crashed on the first lap, as did Danilo Petrucci (IodaRacing Project).