Motorrad Grand Prix Deutschland

MotoGP 2018 Round 9

Repsol Honda look forward to another exciting race at Sachsenring

The epic battle in the Dutch TT at Assen resulted in the first 15 riders crossing the line just 16.043” apart, marking the closest ever top-15 finish of all time. Will the tight, twisty Sachsenring favour more close racing next Sunday?

What’s sure is that the shortest track on the calendar, at 3.67 km, has in recent years proven to be one of the most successful rounds for both Repsol Honda’s Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa, who have scored 14 victories between them and have stood together on the podium three times, in 2014, 2015 and 2017.

The Championship leader, in particular, has taken eight consecutive wins across three classes at the German circuit, each success coming after starting from pole position. Marc and Dani look forward to round 9 of the season, the former to try and extend his lead in the standings, and the latter to make a breakthrough in his season.

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Marc Marquez has 8 wins: 1 x 125 (2010), 2 x Moto2 (2011, 2012), and 5 x MotoGP (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017), plus 8 pole positions (he has been on pole for all eight wins).

Dani Pedrosa has 6 wins: 2 x 250 (2004, 2005) and 4 x MotoGP (2007, 2010, 2011, 2012), plus an additional 4 podiums and 1 pole position.

Marc Marquez 93

“The victory we scored at Assen was important because it was a race where it was incredibly easy to make a mistake but instead we were able to increase our advantage in the Championship. Now we go to a very different circuit where we’re normally very strong, but every year is different; you could object that I often repeat this idea, but it’s true! Weather could play an important role, as we’ve seen in the past: if it’s rainy or mixed, everything will change very quickly and you must be ready. So we’ll see; we’ll go there and try to find our level and be strong from the start of the weekend. Then on Sunday we’ll try and fight for the podium again.”

Dani Pedrosa 26

“I look forward to the race at Sachsenring, a track that I like. In the second part of the race at Assen, we managed to lap at a better pace than we did during the rest of the weekend, so we’ll try and build on that at Sachsenring. We also must improve our speed when we’re on new tyres in order to be faster in qualifying.”