Jorge Lorenzo won the Japan Grand Prix on Sunday ahead of Marc Marquez, ensuring that the MotoGP world championship battle will go down to the final race of the season.
Yamaha rider Lorenzo started from pole position and staged an impeccable display to outperform championship leader Marquez on a Honda after a spectacular duel.
Third was Dani Pedrosa, also on a Honda.
Marquez now has 318 championship points, 13 more than fellow Spaniard Lorenzo with a maximum 25 points left in the season.
Valencia in a fortnight will be the first time in seven years that the world title has gone down to the wire.
Marquez is guaranteed to win the title if he places fourth or better, regardless of Lorenzo’s performance.
The 20-year-old is bidding to become the youngest ever MotoGP world champion and the first rookie title winner for 35 years.
Lorenzo kept up his guard as the Honda duo trailed right behind him until the mid-point of the race.
Pedrosa began to slip in lap 15, leaving Lorenzo and Marquez to engage in a gruelling duel that gradually intensified.
In lap 14, Marquez closed in on Lorenzo from the outside. Their bikes nearly touched but the Yamaha rider edged by to maintain his position.
By lap 20, Lorenzo had begun to widen his lead with Marquez navigating carefully around slower riders who had been lapped by the frontrunners.
In the end, Lorenzo clocked 42min 34.291sec, followed by Marquez who finished 3.188sec later. Pedrosa finished 4.592sec after Lorenzo.
Marquez said he struggled with his braking on the stop-and-go Motegi circuit, and decided to settle for second after having judged that it would be difficult to catch Lorenzo.
“In the end, I saw Jorge started to push a little bit more,” Marquez said, adding he himself was pushed to his limits.
“So I said, 20 points (second place) for the championship. In Valencia, there will be another race. It will be interesting, for sure.”
Lorenzo has admitted it will be difficult defending his title but voiced satisfaction with Sunday’s race, praised by many journalists as the best of his career.
Conditions at the mountainous Motegi circuit were dry and sunny on Sunday, after dense fog and torrential rain forced the cancellation of free practice on Friday and Saturday.
Riders went straight into the qualifying sessions on Saturday afternoon on a wet surface.
Sunday’s dry weather forced the teams to change their settings at the last minute.
Hours before the race, Marquez crashed at high speed in a practice session although he walked away unscathed.
Riders’ nerves were also tested as the track north of Tokyo felt strong tremors from a powerful undersea earthquake off the northeast coast early Saturday, although it caused no damage to the circuit or elsewhere.
