MISANO ADRIATICO (Italy): Italian MotoGP great Valentino Rossi won the San Marino Moto GP for Yamaha on Sunday while Honda’s runaway championship leader Marc Marquez suffered a rare spill and finished 15th.

The 35-year-old Rossi clocked a time of 44 minutes, 14.586 seconds to finish 1.578 seconds ahead of Yamaha team-mate Jorge Lorenzo and send the partisan crowd wild as he claimed his first victory of the season and ended Honda’s 100 percent winning record for the season.

“I’m very happy. It was a great race,” an ecstatic Rossi, a nine-time world champion in all categories, told Sky Sports.

“Obviously incidents like the one affecting Marquez don’t happen very often. But today we knew we had a great chance to win this race. I really enjoyed the race, so many people; so many fans. It was a perfect day.”

Spaniard Marquez, who started on the second row and was chasing a record-equalling 12th victory in 13 races so far this year, lost control of his bike with 19 laps to go with the machine slipping out from beneath him under braking.

The 21-year-old then struggled to get the Honda started again with marshals pushing him along. Marquez’s team-mate Dani Pedrosa was third.

With five championship races remaining Marquez remains leader on 289 points but has seen Pedrosa (215) and Rossi (214) close the gap to 74 and 75 points respectively.

Published in Dawn, September 15th, 2014