VOLUME 56 ISSUE 40 OCTOBER 8, 2019 P65
Marc Marquez is
now an eight-time
world champion at
only 26 years old.
Impressive, huh?
BY MICHAEL SCOTT
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GOLD & GOOSE
M
arc Marquez has done it again. His eighth
World Championship, sixth in the premier
class, was achieved in the best possible
way. With victory.
He didn't need to win the race—only to finish
ahead of his last remaining rival, Andrea Dovizio-
so's Ducati. Which would have posed no great
difficulty. But the Repsol Honda star didn't fancy
being over-shadowed by the man most likely—
eventually—to depose him.
As at Misano two races ago, Marquez tailed bril-
liant rookie Fabio Quartaro's Petronas Yamaha until
the closing lap, showing the 20-year-old French
rookie his front wheel a couple of times.
He pounced on the last lap, Quartararo returned
the move into the tight final corner. But Marquez
had judged it right. He went by again on the cut-
back. After coming off second-best in last-corner
fights in Qatar, Austria and Great Britain, this was
one last-corner battle Marquez wasn't going to
lose. He won by 0.171 of a second.
His triumph, the ninth win of a year in which he has
not finished lower than second, came after a bruising
crash on Friday that saw him hospitalized for a body
scan. With no fractures, he could proceed.
