Racing
John Oreovicz, Autos, Open-Wheel 9y

Marc Marquez stays perfect in the United States

INDIANAPOLIS -- Marc Marquez earned his third consecutive win in the Red Bull Indianapolis Grand Prix to remain unbeaten in the United States over the course of his MotoGP career.

Marquez, the two-time defending MotoGP series champion, took his Honda past Jorge Lorenzo's Yamaha for the lead with three laps to go and eased away to win by 0.688 seconds.

Marquez has started seven MotoGP races in the USA since 2013 and won all of them. He has also won his last five starts on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course -- three in MotoGP as well as Moto2 support races in 2011 and '12.

MotoGP championship leader Valentino Rossi finished third for Yamaha after a race-long battle with the Honda of Dani Pedrosa as the two factory teams dominated the action.

The key in terms of the big picture is that Rossi won his personal Yamaha vs. Honda battle with Pedrosa, whereas Lorenzo came up short against Marquez after leading the first 25 laps of the 27-lap race.

Rossi leads Lorenzo by nine points, with Marquez now up to third in the standings, 56 points behind Rossi.

Third place at Indianapolis was solid damage control for Rossi, who had qualified eighth fastest on a track he openly dislikes. The six-time MotoGP champion made a good start to quickly move up into contention for a podium finish as he and Pedrosa had the most exciting duel in the race, exchanging third place several times over the course of the final 10 laps.

"A very difficult race, very demanding, but I'm happy because I lost just four points to Jorge," Rossi said. "I was very quick to catch fourth place, but Pedrosa was difficult. I overtake and tried to pull away, but Dani continued to push and it was a great battle.

"I'm very happy that I was able to beat him and arrive another time at the podium."

About six seconds up the road from Rossi, Marquez paced himself before finally drafting Lorenzo down the long pit straight to execute a clean pass into Turn 1 at the start of the 25th lap. From there it was an easy cruise to his 22nd career victory in just 46 MotoGP starts.

Marquez is trying to rebound from a challenging start to his 2015 campaign, including three DNFs in the first seven races. After finishing a close second to Rossi at Assen, the Spaniard has won the last two MotoGP races at Germany and Indianapolis but he concedes that Rossi's 56-point advantage will be a huge challenge to overcome.

"It will be difficult because both Yamaha riders are really strong," Marquez said. "Of course, the other results of the podium are not in my hands. But we were down 65 points, and now we are 56 -- we are closer.

"Still we believe, but we must be honest -- it will be really difficult," he added. "For me, the target is to enjoy the bike and win races. Here we were able to win, and now will see what happens ahead."

Sunday's race was classic Marquez, with the young Spaniard patiently tracking Lorenzo until he could sense the Yamaha rider was struggling with rear grip.

Both riders had crashed in the morning warm-up, with Lorenzo switching to a spare chassis after badly damaging his primary bike.

"It was a little bit difficult to fight against my mind to recover the confidence and start the race full of confidence, but I did it and made a good start," Lorenzo said. "We made some improvements to the bike and could be fast and constant throughout the race.

"It was a good ride and I tried to escape from Marc, who demonstrated all weekend that he is very strong. I knew even at my best I probably couldn't escape him, and even going much better than practice was not good enough to pull away. Our pace this time was not enough to win the race from Marc."

Lorenzo was disappointed to have not gained as much ground on Yamaha teammate Rossi in the championship as he had hoped.

"We were really close to recover more than nine points," Lorenzo said. "It could have been 13 points if we had won the race and Valentino finished in fourth place.

"It's still much better at this point having nine less points than 17 less. I can be happy."

Still, the happiest man at the Brickyard on Sunday was Marquez, who is starting to again show the form that earned him MotoGP championships in his first two years in road racing's top category.

"Jorge was able to run a faster pace than I expected and in the middle of the race I was struggling a little bit, a half a second or six-tenths behind him," Marquez explained. "I knew my only chance would be to attack at the end and I pushed for two or three laps to surprise him.

"At the end, we have to be happy because we won the race and took 25 points and that's important. We'll enjoy the victory, but we have to think ahead to [the next MotoGP round at] Brno because we must work hard if we want to be again on the podium."

American Nicky Hayden finished 16th in what may have been his final MotoGP start on U.S. soil.

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