Sepang, Malaysia – 25 October 2015: Álex Márquez was an early casualty in Sepang with the Team Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS rider crashing out of the Malaysian Grand Prix on lap five.

Having qualified on the third row Márquez had looked set for another strong race in his rookie Moto2 campaign but the higher temperatures of race day played havoc with the balance of his bike.  The Spaniard struggled with a lack of feeling throughout the race with a lot of movement from the front and rear of the bike. Márquez's crash occurred at the slow speed hairpin, turn nine, after he lost the front end.

It has been a difficult trio of overseas races for the reigning Moto3 World Champion with only seven points to show for his outings in Japan, Australia and Malaysia. However, his pace in practice and qualifying from this weekend once again showed the potential that is yet to be fully realised.

Álex Márquez: DNF
“The feeling from this weekend was positive because we improved a lot in every session and we're not too far from the top five. We had a similar rhythm to them but in the race my start wasn't perfect and then from the first lap until the crash I felt a lot movement from the front and the rear and I couldn't get the bike stopped or get it turned on the brakes. I could feel the front closing a lot. When I was in P11 I thought that there was nothing to lose so tried to push harder but I had some movement and I crashed. Also the conditions changed a lot and we need to see in the data what happened in the race for us because the crash was so strange.”

Michael Bartholemy: Team Principal
“For sure I was expecting more. I thought that we could finish in the top eight because the lap time was there from Álex but maybe he was too quick to try and catch back places lost at the start. To crash out of the race in this position, and so early on, is always hard and it would have been better to back off slightly and finish today. This hasn’t been the best overseas trip for us in Moto2, but we need to head back to Europe now and focus on finishing the season on a high in the final race at Valencia.”