Miller ‘not happy’ as Marquez wins fifth straight at Brno

The #93 Desmosedici GP25 rider started second alongside teammate Francesco Bagnaia on the sister #63 bike.

Marquez tried to pass Bagnaia at Turn 3, but the pole position winner got the switchback to maintain his lead.

At the same time, Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi put a pass around the outside of Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo for third.

Bezzecchi continued his charge on Lap 1, passing Marquez into Turn 5 for second.

At the start of Lap 2, Bezzecchi bombed Bagnaia into Turn 1 to take the lead away. Moments later, Marquez made the move for second.

Down in seventh, Gresini rider Alex Marquez slid out of contention at Turn 12 on Lap 2 and took Honda rider Joan Mir with him.

Bagnaia continued to fade and dropped as low as fifth behind factory KTM riders Pedro Acosta and Enea Bastianini.

However, Bagnaia was gifted fourth place back when Bastianini suffered a sizeable crash on Lap 7.

The #23 rider’s RC16 went cartwheeling through the gravel trap at Turn 3, destroying his bike.

On Lap 8, Marquez made the decisive move for the lead, which he never relinquished thereafter.

The final half of the race was relatively uneventful. Marquez controlled proceedings to beat Bezzecchi by 1.7s while Acosta was 3.3s back in third.

Bagnaia put in a late charge to no avail to finish fourth ahead of Trackhouse rider Raul Fernandez.

“I saw that in the early laps, Marco was pushing hard and taking some risks, so I decided to wait as the race was a really long one,” said Marquez.

“As soon as I noticed the first drop in terms of grip, I overtook him and pulled a gap, and then controlled the race.

“To be honest, the feeling with the bike was superb — even better than the one I had at the Sachsenring.

“I was riding smoothly and had some margin to go even quicker.

“I’m very happy, I enjoyed this first part of the season: the team and the engineers have really done an excellent job.”

Jack Miller completed the top 10 as the second-best Yamaha behind Fabio Quartararo who was sixth.

The Australian bemoaned issues with his bike that left him battling. Nevertheless, it was a crucial result for Miller while his teammate Miguel Oliveira was only 17th.

A decision is expected to be made about Miller’s future at Pramac in the coming weeks.

“It was a long and tough race,” said Miller.

“I had a decent start—better than in the Sprint Race—and was feeling pretty good. We were very conservative, not being completely sure about the tires.

“I found a good rhythm behind Jorge, and everything was fine until about seven laps from the end.

“I changed the engine brake setting, and pretty much at the same time, I started to struggle in Turn 3.

“The clutch was kind of binding up, basically not giving me any engine braking. It was even difficult to tell which gear I was in, as you couldn‘t really feel the downshifts.

“So, I had to reinvent my riding in those final laps, which was tough.

“I had been able to brake pretty late to defend against overtaking moves, but once the issue started, I had to leave some margin and became vulnerable to Brad (Binder) and Pol (Espargaro) catching me.

“I’m not happy with the last three laps, but it is what it is.”

MotoGP takes a break for summer and returns in just under a month on August 15-17 at the Red Bull Ring for the Austrian Motorcycle Grand Prix.

Results: MotoGP Czechia Motorcycle Grand Prix, Brno