Marquez and Lorenzo serve up a classic

Jorge Lorenzo and Marc Marquez treated the 68000 strong crowd at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to a thrilling battle for the win. Both riders fought beside each other all the way through the 27 lap race with the margins between them all but meaningless as they traded blows.

Lorenzo took the lead at the start and his pace was relentless with Marquez following but unable to make any attempts to overtake him. That was until three laps remained and Marquez dived through under braking into the first corner. After that Lorenzo was fast enough to challenge Marquez and he trailed him to the line but ultimately he couldn’t get close enough to make a move.

Valentino Rossi started eighth and it took until half distance for him to fight his way through to the podium and he scrapped with Dani Pedrosa for the remainder of the race. On the final lap Pedrosa had moved into third and Rossi’s run of 13 consecutive podiums was threatened to come to an end but Rossi found a way through and took the final step on the rostrum.

Bradley Smith was sixth ahead of Cal Crutchlow. Smith looked to have the potential to fight with Iannone but the Ducati rider kept enough in hand to be comfortably out of reach of the Tech3 rider until the final five laps when Smith closed to within a couple of tenths of the Ducati and finished just behind to claim yet another top six finish.