Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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MOTOGP FIM MOTOGP WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP ROUND 8 / JUNE 24-25, 2017 TT CIRCUIT ASSEN / ASSEN, THE NETHERLANDS P90 My Own Race: 46 VALENTINO ROSSI 1ST MOTOGP "I'm so happy, and for different reasons," said Rossi, "because it's a very impor- tant victory for the championship, but especially the feeling of coming back to the number one spot after one year is fantastic. Sincerely, I race with motorcycles for this feeling: for what I feel in the five or six final laps of the race. That's always great and especially after a year without a victory. It was a great race and a great battle with Petrucci and everybody else. I'm also happy from a technical point of view, because we worked a lot on the bike and we changed the chassis and now I feel like I can ride the bike more in my own manner, in a better way. Everything is open and this year we discovered that, from one track to the other, the situation can change a lot. We have to wait for next week and try to be competitive also at the Sachsenring." 93 MARC MARQUEZ 3RD MOTOGP "I'm very happy with the podium and with our race, as we were competitive enough in the dry at this track, which isn't one of the best for us," said Marc Marquez (Repsol Honda). "Of course, conditions were quite tricky and in this kind of situation you can lose or gain many points. I opted for the safe option, more or less. Maybe I would have been able to try and fight for the victory, but honestly I had some warnings and thought it too dangerous for the championship, so I decided to be consistent in the race and to push hard at the end. I paid close attention, as it was hard to understand where the limit was, but in the end I was able to manage well. We're just 11 points down on the lead and that's important, no matter the fourth position. Now we go to some circuits that could be better for us." 04 ANDREA DOVIZIOSO 5TH MOTOGP "Today's race was a very difficult one and having to start from row three compli- cated things a bit," said new championship leader Andrea Dovizioso. "At the start I wasn't able to be very smooth and I lost touch with the leading group, but I remained focused to see where I could recover and when Vinales crashed in front of me, I pushed hard to get back up with the leading group. At that moment I was the quickest on the track and this is a good sign for our bike. When I came up on the leaders it started to rain but you couldn't really see where the track was dry and where it wasn't. For this reason I didn't want to take any risks and I tried to finish the race in the best possible way to score some valuable points for the championship. " 29 ANDREA IANNONE 9TH MOTOGP "The first part of the race was very positive, I jumped from the 16th place, which was not easy, but I managed to recover and get into the top 10," said Andrea Iannone (Team Suzuki Ecstar) said. "I had a good rhythm, very close to the top. Then we had some problems with the grip. When tires drop, the GSX-RR dramatically changes its behavior, and I couldn't be as effective as I wanted. We have to learn how to better manage these situations and keep closer to our competitors." 25 MAVERICK VINALES 21ST MOTOGP "I can't explain what happened, because I don't even know why I crashed," Vinales said. "I was pushing myself over the limit, trying to bring the Yamaha to the top and I think that if I hadn't crashed I could have reached the riders in front, because our pace was very fast. We need to learn that in qualifying the minimum you have to do is sixth or fifth, so I know that the mistake was made yesterday, not today. I was feeling great on the bike today. I was trying to maintain the tires on a good level and prepar- ing an attack on the last 10 laps. I was riding in a good way and really smoothly on the entire track and I felt much stronger than the other riders, I was trying my best. This crash is something we can't explain, we can only learn from it, especially concerning qualifying."