Jerez MotoGP: Marc Marquez flies to fourth straight win

Despite insisting that he was relatively out of sorts at the Spanish Grand Prix venue, Honda rider Marquez was able to storm away from the competition.

He briefly lost the lead to Valentino Rossi's Yamaha during the opening lap dicing, but once in front proved unstoppable, leading by as much as five seconds.

Rossi hung on to second, resisting initial pressure from team-mate Jorge Lorenzo, and later from Dani Pedrosa's Honda.

Pedrosa overtook a fading Lorenzo with eight laps to go and crossed the line right on Rossi's tail, missing out on second by just 0.098s.

Lorenzo lost touch with this battle, feeling he had taken too much out of his tyres while recovering from his bad start.

Andrea Dovizioso won an enormous battle for fifth place, coming out on top of a last-corner dust-up to get to the flag just ahead of Alvaro Bautista, Aleix Espargaro and Bradley Smith.

Dovizioso's top-five finish was a boost for Ducati on a day when Cal Crutchlow retired early with brake problems and both Michele Pirro and Andrea Iannone crashed.

Results - 27 laps

Pos Rider             Bike                   Time/Gap
 1. Marc Marquez      Honda                45m24.134s
 2. Valentino Rossi   Yamaha                  +1.431s
 3. Dani Pedrosa      Honda                   +1.529s
 4. Jorge Lorenzo     Yamaha                  +8.541s
 5. Andrea Dovizioso  Ducati                 +27.494s
 6. Alvaro Bautista   Gresini Honda          +27.606s
 7. Aleix Espargaro   Forward Yamaha         +27.917s
 8. Bradley Smith     Tech 3 Yamaha          +27.947s
 9. Pol Espargaro     Tech 3 Yamaha          +29.419s
10. Stefan Bradl      LCR Honda              +32.872s
11. Nicky Hayden      Aspar Honda            +35.490s
12. Hiroshi Aoyama    Aspar Honda            +40.083s
13. Scott Redding     Gresini Honda          +43.830s
14. Yonny Hernandez   Pramac Ducati          +52.295s
15. Hector Barbera    Avintia FTR-Kawasaki   +54.873s
16. Michael Laverty   PBM Aprilia          +1m06.182s
17. Broc Parkes       PBM Aprilia          +1m23.420s

Retirements/not classified

    Colin Edwards     Forward Yamaha          26 laps
    Andrea Iannone    Pramac Ducati           22 laps
    Mike di Meglio    Avintia FTR-Kawasaki    21 laps
    Karel Abraham     Cardion Honda           10 laps
    Cal Crutchlow     Ducati                   4 laps
    Michele Pirro     Ducati                   2 laps