ALCANIZ (Spain): Spain’s Jorge Lorenzo won his third race on home soil this season at the Aragon MotoGP to cut the gap on Yahama team-mate Valentino Rossi in the fight for the world championship to just 14 points.

Rossi finished third as he failed to get passed Honda’s Dani Pedrosa despite a series of attempts.

However, defending world champion Marc Marquez’s hopes of a third consecutive title are all but over as he crashed out on the second lap.

For Marquez to clinch the title he would have to win each of the last four races, and Rossi no points at all.

Marquez started on pole at his self-confessed favourite race afer setting a blistering new track record in qualifying.

However, he had already been overtaken by Lorenzo by the time he pushed too hard on the second lap and was unable to get his bike going again after running into the gravel.

“It was important for me to get a good start as Marc is very good over the first two laps. He gave everything to follow me and perhaps he went too far,” Lorenzo told reporters.

Lorenzo was then allowed to ride easily to his sixth win of the season with a lead of 2.683 seconds at the end over Pedrosa who just held off Rossi on the final lap after a fierce battle.

The Italian passed Pedrosa on five occasions, but each time the Spaniard was able to respond immediately to prevent Rossi picking up an vital extra four points in the title race.

“I tried everything, but unfortunately Dani was able to overtake me in the next corner. After I would try another time but he was always able to come back,” said Rossi.

“I knew it was difficult to beat Dani because he had very good pace, but I tried and I am not very happy because I needed that four points more for the second place. Today was not possible, but anyway it was a good result.”

Andrea Iannone of Italy finished fourth and countryman Andrea Dovizioso fifth.

With four races to go Rossi leads the championship with 263 points from Lorenzo on 249. Marquez is third with 184 points.

The next MotoGP race is on October 11 in Japan.

Published in Dawn, September 28th , 2015

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