VOL. 55 ISSUE 40 OCTOBER 9, 2018 P75
Marc Marquez lofts it up after
a stunning last-corner win
over Andrea Dovizioso (04).
Maverick Vinales (25) was
happy to finally get back on the
podium in third.
BY MICHAEL SCOTT
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GOLD & GOOSE
T
he first Thai GP was steamy, gaudy, noisy—
and feel-good fantastic. More than 100,000
first-time MotoGP fans in party mode,
celebrating every rider with no favorites and no
booing, made it so. So too did the riders. They
rewarded those fans with a tooth-and-nail fight to
the bitter end, all the way down the points.
The main one was for the win, and in an
unexpected role reversal, Repsol Honda's Marc
Marquez played the same last-corner tactics
on Ducati's Andrea Dovizioso that he had suc-
cumbed to three times last year. They'd changed
places with increasing frequency over the last
five of 26 laps of the 2.82-mile Chang Interna-
tional Circuit outside Buriram in the northeast of
Thailand. On the first five occasions, long-time
leader Dovi had passed Marquez straight back.
