VOL. 53 ISSUE 14 APRIL 12, 2016 P49
BY MICHAEL SCOTT
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GOLD & GOOSE
T
hey should, somebody
suggested, name a cor-
ner at the Circuit of the
Americas after Marc Marquez.
Why stop there? Why not name
that giddyingly steep 130-foot
swoop up to the tight first corner
"Mount Marquez?"
Repsol Honda's double world
champion made his first ascent,
from pole position, on MotoGP's
first-ever visit to Texas in 2013,
becoming the youngest ever
winner, at 20 years old. He's
done the same every year since.
Thanks to new software and
tires, the gaps were smaller,
at least in qualifying. But the
final outcome was very much
the same. The weekend was
reminiscent of those times in the
reign of Mick Doohan and Valen-
tino Rossi, when every race was
about who would come second.
There wasn't much doubt
about that, as it turned out, as
defender Jorge Lorenzo came
back from a morning warm-up
crash and two uncharacteristic
errors on the first lap to take
up a pursuit that he must have
known from the start was hope-
less. He'd admitted the day
before he was relying on the
"anything can happen" syn-
drome. "Nobody is unbeatable,"
he had said.
Today Marquez was. The gap
had stretched steadily to eight
seconds as they started the last
lap.
In a race packed with inci-
NEVER IN DOUBT
FROM START TO FINISH, MARC MARQUEZ ONCE
AGAIN RULED CIRCUIT OF THE AMERICAS
