Marc Marquez sees his brother fall and flies away in the general classification

Spaniard Marc Marquez won the Dutch Grand Prix, the 10th round of the season, on Sunday at Assen, cementing his status as leader of the MotoGP world championship.

The Ducati rider won ahead of Italians Marco Bezzecchi (Aprilia) and Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati), while his brother Alex Marquez, second in the championship, was forced to retire after a fall on the fifth of 23 laps of the circuit.

Starting from pole position, Frenchman Fabio Quartararo quickly abandoned any chance of a podium finish to finish 10th, two places ahead of his compatriot Johann Zarco, 12th.

This victory for Marquez, the 68th of his MotoGP career and 94th in total, allows him to equal the number of victories in the premier class with the legend Giacomo Agostini.

Above all, it allows the Catalan to drive the nail in the coffin of the championship. With one Grand Prix left in the middle of the season, on July 13 in Germany, Marc Marquez now has a 68-point lead over his runner-up, Alex Marquez, who will be reduced in ten days at the Sachsenring after fracturing the metacarpal of his left hand on Sunday in his fall after contact with Pedro Acosta.

Already the winner of the sprint race on Saturday, the six-time world champion "did not expect to have such a great weekend" in front of the 109,000 spectators present on Sunday.

"This TT is not my favorite circuit. I've only won here twice in the past," commented Marquez, "happy with the 37 points he took" at the Cathedral of Speed, which celebrated the hundredth anniversary of a premier-class race at Assen on Sunday.

"37 + 1," the Spanish rider then corrected, pointing to the stitch on his chin, the result of one of his two crashes on Friday during practice. A weekend that started badly, then ended in a blaze of glory.