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Marquez returns to his habits in Austin

>> With this Grand Prix of the Americas, Marc Marquez has found his way back to victory. For a long time it seemed obvious to him at Austin, a track on which he reigned without adversity until 2019. That year, he had crashed while he was leading the race. It was the first time he had missed victory on this circuit, but also more widely in the United States since 2011.

>> On Sunday, Marquez also set the fastest time in the race. This achievement has only escaped him once in Austin, in 2015. It is the second time this season that he has succeeded, after Aragón.

>> However, he missed pole position during this Texas weekend, which had never happened to him since the circuit was introduced to the calendar in 2013. In eight editions of this Grand Prix, the hat trick will have escaped him three times: in 2015 because he had not set the fastest time in the race, in 2019 when he missed the victory, and this time for lack of pole.

>> Marc Marquez completed the 20 laps in the lead. This makes him the third driver who has been seen the most in the leading position throughout the season, after Fabio Quartararo (99 laps) and Pecco Bagnaia (92).

>> Yamaha equaled its best result in Austin, with the second place of Fabio Quartararo. This was already the classification of the first M1 during the last four editions of this Grand Prix.

>> Already the Frenchman holding the most podiums in the premier class since the previous Grand Prix, Quartararo won his 20th finish in the top 3 in Texas. He is also the only one to have scored points in all races this season.

>> Systematically qualified among the first five, Fabio Quartararo dominates the BMW Award, ranking where he reached 300 points, on the basis of a scale identical to that of the races (a pole is worth 25 points, a second place is worth 20 points, etc.). Over the last six seasons, he is the only one with Marc Marquez to have achieved this score, in 2019 and today. He is also the only one to never have gone through Q1 in 2021.

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>> The pole position, it is in Pecco Bagnaia that it returned. This is his third achievement in a row, a series he already obtained in 2018, the year of his coronation in Moto2.

>> By placing third in the race, the Italian rider gave Ducati his fifth podium in Austin. It is also his third consecutive podium in a personal capacity, again unheard of for him since 2018.

Bridgestone records hold up

>> The records that Michelin was aiming for have not been broken: Austin still has a best time in the race and an absolute record dating from the Bridgestone era (2014 and 2015).

>> The best top speed on the other hand was beaten, and clearly: Jack Miller reached 352.9 km / h, an improvement of 5.2 km / h compared to the previous benchmark which dated from 2018. Austin takes a leap. three places in the ranking of the best V-max on the current tracks, now only ahead of Losail (362.4), Mugello (362.4) and Barcelona (355.2).

>> It is curious to note that only one driver exceeded the bar of 350 km / h before the race, in this case Johann Zarco who reached this unprecedented milestone in Austin during the warm-up. On the other hand, in the race there were five of them to achieve this: Zarco once again, Miller, thus the record maker, but also Enea Bastianini (Ducati), Brad Binder (KTM) and Aleix Espargaró (Aprilia).

>> Another record broken, that of the time used to complete the entire race: Marc Marquez achieved it four seconds faster than Alex Rins in 2019, which was until now the benchmark. And to think that he initially slowed down the race …

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