In the closing stages, Repsol Honda's Marc Marquez, who had set the fastest lap of the race on lap three, began to challenge his team-mate for second. The reigning Moto2 champ came closest to getting past with two laps to go, when he got inside Pedrosa at Turn Four, only to suffer a major front-end moment.
He performed a miracle to stay on and even then didn‰Ûªt give up the chase, crossing the line a mere 0.063 seconds down on Pedrosa.
‰ÛÏIt was a difficult race. We expected it to be tough, but we never imagined that we would be fighting for the podium with Jorge and Dani and I‰Ûªm very happy with this result!" Marquez commented. "It gives us confidence after a slightly tricky weekend, as in the end we found the ideal set-up.
"During the race I learned a lot from riding behind Dani, trying to figure out how to ride a MotoGP bike at this track, and in the end we did quite well. We knew it would be difficult to finish in the top five, but we managed to get on the podium.
"I can only say I‰Ûªm thrilled with the result. Now we look to Assen and we‰Ûªll see if we can improve anything for that race during the test at Aragon," he concluded.
