MotoGP Texas – Marquez penalized and Viñales starts from “pole position”

Bruno Gomes

April 22, 2018

The moment that made Marc Marquez drop down 3 positions on the grid for the MotoGP race in Texas

It seems Marc Marquez can’t stay out of trouble, and although this time around the Spanish MotoGP Champion didn’t make any contact with other riders, he still got penalized for his on track riding.

During Qualifying 2 for the Americas GP, Marquez was already the fastest rider of the session, but a small mistake made him lose the front of his Repsol Honda, and he went down. He quickly got back on track but with his second bike, reentering the session while other riders were doing fast laps in order to demote Marquez from provisional “pole position”.

One of those riders was Maverick Viñales (Movistar Yamaha) who came up behind Marquez really fast while on a lap that could give him top spot at Q2.

Marc Marquez was on his out lap, but instead of riding out of race line, the Honda rider stayed right in the middle of the track in the moment when Viñales was trying to pass by him. The Yamaha rider had to abort his lap, and exchanged some words when he passed by Marquez.

At the post qualifying interviews, Maverick Viñales made sure he didn’t say anything too aggressive against Marc Marquez, but Race Direction analyzed what happened and handed Marquez a 3 position penalty for today’s MotoGP race at Circuit of The Americas.

The Grand Prix Permanent Bureau already warned that they gave specific instructions to FIM MotoGP Stewards to adopt a more severe approach to possible infringements of the regulations, so this penalty to Marc Marquez isn’t really surprising at all.

This means that Marc Marquez loses his perfect record at COTA, and will start the MotoGP race in fourth, while Maverick Viñales gets promoted to “pole position”, second in the grid will be Andrea Iannone (Ecstar Suzuki) and third will be Johann Zarco (Monster Yamaha Tech3).