Aragon MotoGP: Marc Marquez defeats Jorge Lorenzo, Dani Pedrosa crashes

Pedrosa's lap-six incident looks set to end his 2013 championship hopes, and came amid a battle with Honda team-mate Marquez.

Lorenzo's Yamaha had again burst into the lead at the start, but this time the Hondas soon reeled him back in.

As they did so, Pedrosa overtook Marquez. Unique among the top three in running a harder front tyre, Pedrosa looked like he might have a race pace advantage.

A few laps later, Marquez surged back down the outside of Pedrosa to try to reclaim second, but ran wide over the run-off area.

At the same moment, Pedrosa launched into a violent high-side on the exit of the corner and crashed into retirement.

He was checked in the medical centre for a potential left knee injury but escaped without serious damage.

Marquez was now two seconds behind Lorenzo, a gap he chipped away at until slipping into the lead with six laps remaining.

Lorenzo tried to fight back and closed in again, only for a final spurt from Marquez to give him victory by 1.3 seconds.

Valentino Rossi returned to the podium in third on the second Yamaha.

He had to fight hard to get there, only claiming the place after a huge, race-long dice that also involved Alvaro Bautista, Stefan Bradl and Cal Crutchlow.

Bradley Smith, Ducati pair Andrea Dovizioso and Nicky Hayden, and Andrea Iannone completed the top 10, with Aleix Espargaro a class apart in CRT again in 11th.

Results - 23 laps:

Pos  Rider             Team/Bike               Time/Gap
 1.  Marc Marquez      Honda                 42m03.459s
 2.  Jorge Lorenzo     Yamaha                   +1.356s
 3.  Valentino Rossi   Yamaha                  +12.927s
 4.  Alvaro Bautista   Gresini Honda           +13.787s
 5.  Stefan Bradl      LCR Honda               +13.973s
 6.  Cal Crutchlow     Tech 3 Yamaha           +14.662s
 7.  Bradley Smith     Tech 3 Yamaha           +31.220s
 8.  Andrea Dovizioso  Ducati                  +40.671s
 9.  Nicky Hayden      Ducati                  +53.413s
10.  Andrea Iannone    Pramac Ducati           +55.067s
11.  Aleix Espargaro   Aspar Aprilia           +58.001s
12.  Yonny Hernandez   Pramac Ducati         +1m05.513s
13.  Randy de Puniet   Aspar Aprilia         +1m06.589s
14.  Hiroshi Aoyama    Avintia FTR-Kawasaki  +1m08.674s
15.  Claudio Corti     Forward FTR-Kawasaki  +1m09.130s
16.  Colin Edwards     Forward FTR-Kawasaki  +1m12.041s
17.  Luca Scassa       Cardion Aprilia       +1m45.152s
18.  Bryan Staring     Gresini FTR-Honda     +1m45.228s
19.  Lukas Pesek       Ioda-Suter-BMW        +1m45.583s

Retirements:

     Hector Barbera    Avintia FTR-Kawasaki      8 laps
     Dani Pedrosa      Honda                     5 laps
     Damian Cudlin     PBM-Aprilia               3 laps
     Danilo Petrucci   Ioda-Suter-BMW            0 laps
     Michael Laverty   PBM Aprilia               0 laps