MotoGP leader Marquez crashes while chasing Rossi at Misano (VIDEO)
Championship leader Marc Marquez made an uncharacteristic error on Lap 10 of the Misano race and lost the front end at Rio corner, costing him a chance to fight for the win.
Marquez was able to restart but only managed to climb back to 15th and take one championship point.
After a promising start, Marquez steadily progressed up to second, after battling with Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi. However, as Marquez pushed to try and stay with race-leader Rossi, he made a small mistake and lost the front at Turn 4 at a fairly low speed, with the bike spinning out. He was able to pick the bike up but had trouble getting it started again. The race marshals arrived and managed to bump start him, but by this point the pack had disappeared.
The runaway standings leader pushed hard to catch the back markers and was able to match the lap times being set by the front runners, but the distance was too great.
Marquez maintains his lead in the MotoGP World Championship, but the gap is now decreased to 74 points over second-placed Dani Pedrosa, who finished third in the race.
Looking at things from a positive perspective Marquez said, "I'm happy with how today went, despite the crash due to my first mistake of the season, because yesterday I did not think that I would be capable of sticking with Valentino and Jorge. They had a little bit more pace, and today we were able to get fairly close to them."
"I saw the possibility of fighting with Valentino for the victory, but that was not possible in the end because of the mistake; I was riding over the inside of the rumble strip and that meant that I lost the front. Luckily I was able to rejoin the race, continue with a good pace and score a point that could always come in handy in the future."
