Marc Marquez has won it again. The Spanish rider has taken the 2019 MotoGP title, mathematically clinching the series at the Thai GP round.
The MotoGP championship is Marquez’s sixth in the premier class, and eighth in total. All his premier class wins have been with the Repsol Honda factory team. He won this year’s title convincingly, as there are still four races left in the schedule. At this point, he’s more than 100 points ahead of second-place Andrea Dovizioso (riding the factory Ducati), and has a whopping 302-point lead over his own Honda teammate, Jorge Lorenzo, who’s no doubt ruing the day he ever left his comfortable berth at Yamaha for supposedly greener pastures. Maybe even ruing the day he was born, with results like that (he finished 18th in the race).
While Lorenzo certainly hasn’t pressured Marquez this year, French rookie Fabio Quartararo certainly has. Quartararo started the race on pole, and while he’s currently only 7th in the standings, with 143 points, it’s hard to imagine he won’t be an even bigger threat to Marquez, in the Spaniard’s 2020 quest for his next title. But for now, Marquez still seem unstoppable, as he proved by bulling his way past Quartararo for the win on Sunday at Buriram.
At the age of 26 years, 231 days, Marquez is now the youngest rider to earn six premier class wins (taking that honour from Giacomo Agostini) and the youngest rider to earn eight MotoGP series titles (taking that honour from Mike Hailwood).
The “Spoiler Alert” is a little too late given the title don’t you think?
You know, we just can’t win with the spoiler alerts. We thought about holding this story back until everyone had seen the race on PVR, but that would be a bit pointless, especially since the results are already reported openly elsewhere. We thought about just coming out and stating what happened in the headline, like the good old days of sandwich boards and newspaper hawkers, but in the end, we went with an innocuous headline that didn’t give away any details. And it seems we still can’t win. So from now, we’ll forget the spoiler alerts. if you haven’t watched the race and don’t want to know the results, don’t turn on any screens. You’ve been warned!
It seems I may have struck an exposed nerve and I apologise (after missing your reponse but getting my honorable mention in the Monday morning CMG email). I had been mostly away from CMG for quite some time but had recently rekindled my interest after subscribing to the post notifications. WhIle I had already watched the race I was momentarily taken back to the old days of the soapbox, and working the Calgary bike show with Rob, where the barbs were sharp but the intention was friendly. I now realize that yours is a thankless job, and the barbs must outweigh the applause, we don’t have that history and you would also not recall the discussions around this in the early days of CMG. No matter, I stay away from most screens, (and now my email), until I have watched the race. My intention was friendly though, and I still think it is amusing by titleing something SPOILLER ALERT followed immediately by the spoiler itself, that there was surprise at the response. ….
Keep up the good work, and I’ll leave my friendly barbs back in the safe space circa 2002.
Now that Marquez has mastered Moto GP racing, maybe he should move up to NASCAR. 🙂 :-),