The reigning world champion relinquished the lead to Lorenzo at the start, as the Yamaha rider beat both Marquez and his Honda team-mate Dani Pedrosa away to hit the front from third on the grid.

Marquez then sat on Lorenzo’s tail lap after lap, waiting until three laps from the end to finally attempt a pass.

He made a move stick into Turn 1, and while Lorenzo stayed on his case, Marquez had the pace to prevent his fellow Spaniard from coming back through.

Behind the leaders, their team-mates played out a more eventful battle for third, with Valentino Rossi getting the better of Pedrosa.

Rossi stormed from eighth to fourth in the opening laps, and he then set about hunting Pedrosa as the second Honda gradually lost touch with the lead battle.

When the Yamaha eventually got through it seemed unlikely Pedrosa could fight back, but he showed some fight when a few spots of rain started to fall and re-passed the championship leader.

Pedrosa spent the next few laps preparing for an attack into Turn 1 and eventually made it stick, but half a lap later he handed the place back to Rossi by going wide at the end of the backstraight.

He made another pass into Turn 1 at the start of the final lap, but Rossi was quick to respond, pouncing at the next corner and holding onto the position to the end.

Behind the Hondas and Yamahas, Ducati’s Andrea Iannone came home fifth, resisting a late surge from Bradley Smith’s Tech 3 Yamaha.

They ended up comfortably clear of Smith’s team-mate Pol Espargaro, who eventually got the better of a slow-starting Cal Crutchlow.

Crutchlow fell to the bottom of the top 10 from fourth on the grid early on, but he fought back to seventh until losing out to Espargaro.

Andrea Dovizioso, who went off at Turn 2 on the opening lap and plummeted down the order, recovered all the way to ninth, just ahead of the satellite Ducati of Danilo Petrucci, who came home 10th from fifth on the grid.