HOHENSTEIN-ERNSTTHAL, Germany – Marc Marquez completed a decade of dominance on Sunday at the Sachsenring with his 10th-straight victory at the German circuit.
Marquez’s dominant win in the German MotoGP Grand Prix was his 49th premier class triumph, fifth of the season and seventh in a row at the Sachsenring in MotoGP action.
The German won at the Sachsenring in the 125cc class in 2010 before claiming back-to-back Moto2 wins there in 2011 and 2012. He’s won every MotoGP race there since 2013.
Marquez beat Yamaha’s Maverick Viñales and journeyman Cal Crutchlow at the front of the field, but his victory wasn’t as easy as it might have seemed from the box score.
Marquez was sluggish off the line and it looked like he would get swallowed up heading into turn one, but the No. 93 was last among the late brakers and dove back into the lead as a result.
Fabio Quartararo slipped back from second to sixth at the start aboard his Yamaha as Viñales, Jack Miller, Alex Rins and Crutchlow all got past the Frenchman.
However, Quartararo’s race ended at turn three. The rookie went to get back past Ducati Team’s Danilo Petrucci on lap two, but the front of his Yamaha washed away from him as the 20-year-old crashed out of a race for the first time this season.
At the forefront of the MotoGP freight train, Marquez conducted the pace ahead of Viñales, with Crutchlow and Rins demoting Miller down to fifth as the top four started to edge clear of the rest of the field.
A 1:21.228 – a new lap record – on lap five saw Marquez’s lead creep up to just under a second over Rins, with the latter also stretching his advantage over Viñales and Crutchlow to the same distance.
Lap 10 saw Marquez go four tenths of a second faster than Rins as the gap rose above the two-second barrier. From then on, there was no stopping the nine-time Sachsenring winner from filling both hands with victories in the end.
“It was a perfect strategy, but I didn’t have a perfect start, as I ran a little deep at turn one,” noted Marquez. “After that, my plan was two slow laps to warm the front tire well and then push, and it’s exactly what I did. Step by step, I opened the gap and followed the plan as I needed to. Once the gap was at three seconds, I stayed there and saved the tire and enjoyed riding.
“It’s a great feeling to win here again and to enter the summer break in this way,” Marquez added. “I want to say thank you to the Repsol Honda Team for their work in this race and the first half of the season.”
Viñales crossed the line second for his second-straight podium of the season, with Crutchlow equaling his best result of the year in third, his first podium since the Qatar GP after battling a torn anterior cruciate ligament and a small fracture to the top of his tibia.
Petrucci finished fourth and Andrea Dovizioso climbed from 13th to complete the top five.
Miller was sixth ahead of Joan Mir, Valentino Rossi, Franco Morbidelli and Stefan Bradl, who was subbing for the injured Jorge Lorenzo.