Making his Marc: Marquez's 10 Victory Streak Comes To An End

Everything comes to an end some time or another. Even defending MotoGP world champion Marc Marquez’s incredible streak of ten straight victories in this year’s FIM Motorcycle Grand Prix World Championship.

The Spaniard, who last year became the youngest ever MotoGP world champion was beaten to the finish line at the Brno round of this year’s championship by not just one, but three riders.

Marquez’s Honda teammate Dani Pedrosa, Jorge Lorenzo of the factory Yamaha team and teammate Valentino Rossi took the top three spots on the podium as Marquez was unable to beat legendary Italian Giacomo Agostini’s 43-year-old record of ten straight wins in the top category.

Pedrosa’s win, however, means that Honda has done a clean sweep of the first eleven races of the season with seven more remaining. It was Pedrosa’s first win since the Sepang, Malaysia round of last year’s MotoGP season.

The fourth place was, incredibly, the first time Marquez finished off the podium this year and only the third time since his MotoGP debut last year that he failed to finish in the top three.

The result means that Marquez still has a massive 263 points (out of a maximum possible haul of 275) but Pedrosa cuts the gap to him by 12 points with a points tally of 186 points.

Anyone stopping Marquez from bettering Agostini’s incredible record seemed a remote possibility at Indianapolis, however, where the Spaniard claimed victory. But that just goes to show that there is no such thing as certainty in motorsport, even when a great champion hits a sweet spot like Marquez has done this year and the likes of Rossi, Michael Schumacher, Ayrton Senna, Mick Doohan, Jim Clark etc did in years past.

Even Moto3 rider Alex Rins would be well aware of that after Brno where he celebrated a race win one lap too early and finished ninth instead of first. Predictably enough, the incident has gone viral and will forever serve as a reminder of never taking anything and everything for granted.