The Spanish Alex Rins (Suzuki GSX RR) won the MotoGP Grand Prix of the Americas that took place today, Sunday, at the circuit near the city of Austin, ahead of the Italian Valentino Rossi (Yamaha YZR M 1 ), disappointed by not being able to win, as well as Marc Márquez (Repsol Honda RC 213 V) who crashed when he was the solo leader of the race.
The new leader of the world championship is the Italian Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Desmosedici GP19), who was fourth, with 54 points, ahead of Valentino Rossi and Alex Rins, while Márquez, who arrived at the top of the table at a circuit which for him was a talisman, he leaves in fourth position.
Although both Valentino Rossi and Cal Crutchlow tried to reach the end of the climb of the finish line, Marc Márquez was already the leader of the race and, behind, Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Desmosedici GP19) started well and from thirteenth place was he was eighth in the first quarter, while on the opposite side was Pol Espargaró (KTM RC 16), who went from fifth to seventh in that lapse of terrain.
Márquez commanded the race on the first lap, chased by Rossi, Crutchlow, Jack Miller (Ducati Desmosedici GP19) and Alex Rins (Suzuki GSX RR), with Jorge Lorenzo (Repsol Honda RC 213 V) thirteenth, ahead of Joan Mir (Suzuki GSX RR) and Aleix Espargaró (Aprilia RS-GP), while the last place went to Tito Rabat (Ducati Desmosedici GP18).
In the second lap the race lost its first protagonist, Aleix Espargaró, when he was fifteenth.
In that same lap, the Repsol Honda rider set his first fastest lap (2: 04.529) and was already six tenths ahead of his immediate pursuer, Rossi, with Crutchlow glued to his slipstream.
Third lap and new fastest lap for Márquez (2: 04.372), while Maverick Viñales (Yamaha YZR M 1) and Joan Mir (Suzuki GSX RR) were penalized by the Commissioner’s Panel for getting ahead of the start, with which they had to star a step down the street of workshops that would irrevocably distance them from any possibility of achieving a good result.
Fourth lap and another fast lap by Márquez (2: 04.277), who little by little was putting land in the middle with respect to his pursuers. Barely four laps had elapsed and it could practically be said that the race was firmly condemned, again, in favor of the world leader and current title holder of the category.
With the solid Repsol Honda rider in the first position, the pace imposed began to take its first victims, Cal Crutchlow, who could not hold after Valentino Rossi and crashed on the fifth lap, the same one in which Mir met with his penalty and a lap later Viñales also met. Both had been clearly ahead of the time the red light went off.
But this time luck left Marc Márquez, who on the ninth lap slipped into turn twelve, almost four seconds ahead of Rossi, and fell to the ground without being able to start his Repsol Honda again.
Márquez said goodbye to his second consecutive victory of the season and the seventh in Austin, to have to walk back to his workshop, where the faces were a poem, while with his mistake he left the way clear to a Valentino Rossi who had He was left alone, but the Spaniard Alex Rins (Suzuki GSX RR) was approaching dangerously behind.
Jorge Lorenzo (Repsol Honda RC 213 V), who was twelfth, also said goodbye at the same point as Márquez, although in his case it was due to the same technical failure in training, the chain came off the bike, as already happened to Marc Márquez in Argentina.
In the lead, Valentino Rossi could not prevent Alex Rins from sticking to his slipstream with less than eight laps to go to the end of the test, scheduled for twenty laps, and between them a beautiful strategic duel was established to settle the winner, which in Rossi’s case would be his first victory since Assen in 2017 and for Rins the first with Suzuki in MotoGP.
On lap fifteen, the Suzuki team notified Rins on his on-board computer to use electronic management map number 3 of his motorcycle, probably to achieve a little more performance on his Suzuki in the last laps of the race and with the motorcycle. de Rossi set his sights on the target to beat.
In the second quarter of the seventeenth lap Rins overtook Rossi for the first time, who tried to regain position in one of the corners of the track, but slipped and Suzuki’s Spaniard kept the line perfectly to regain first place.
From there until the end, both played their tricks but those of the Spanish were more solid, which ended up giving Suzuki a new victory since the last one he achieved in 2016 with the also Spanish Maverick Viñales at the English Silverstone circuit.
Pol Espagaró (KTM RC 16) was eighth, with Maverick Viñales eleventh, Tito Rabat fifteenth, who scored his first point in the world championship, and Joan Mir, seventeenth. EFE