In his 130th start, Marc Márquez achieved his 50th Grand Prix win – becoming the ninth rider to reach that mark, and the youngest to do so,[4] at 22 years, 243 days – with a final-lap pass on Jorge Lorenzo.

With Valentino Rossi finishing in fourth place, Lorenzo cut the championship lead to eleven points with two races remaining.

[10] Alex de Angelis also announced that he would not compete the rest of the season after sustaining an injury during a free practice session in Japan, with Damian Cudlin replacing him for the Australian and Malaysian races.

[13] The third practice session began early Saturday morning, a cross wind had developed across pit straight, which compromised riding times.

[14] Despite nearly riding into the back of Pol Espargaró in turn four, Marquez set the quickest time of the weekend a lap later, with Cal Crutchlow finishing in second place and Lorenzo in third, Scott Redding set his fastest lap of the weekend finishing in fourth while Maverick Viñales completed the top five.

[14] In what was described as “perfect track conditions”, Marquez won his eighth pole position for the season, leading throughout the entirety of the qualifying session, setting the fastest time of the weekend on his first attempt.

[14] In an unprecedented and rare moment for the sport, Iannone and Lorenzo tied for second place, with both men setting the exact same top qualifying time, Iannone declared the winner of the tiebreaker from his second fastest qualifying time, while Lorenzo only set one lap.

[16] Championship leader, Rossi performed his worst qualifying session since Indianapolis, finishing in seventh place and on the third row.

[18][19] After sweeping the weekend in practice and qualifying, fans and journalists began predicting how big a margin Marquez would win by and whether any other rider had a chance of victory, not anticipating the incredible race that would unexpectedly unfold the next day.

[20] The battle began to heat up between the top three riders with obvious advantages and disadvantages between the Honda, Yamaha and Ducati.

[21] Tammy Gorali, the MotoGP commentator for Sport 5 Israel, counted 52 passes between the top four riders including 13 lead changes throughout the race with Iannone completing the most, with 18 overtakes.

[21] Iannone's incident with the seagull went viral on social media websites hours after the race, with memes and Facebook pages dedicated to the event.

[21] The event trended worldwide on social media website Twitter, with celebrities such as Mark Webber, Pau Gasol and Ewan McGregor praising the race as one of the best.