MotoGP, Intuisi Blog – Marc Marquez suffered a crash during the Dutch Grand Prix, but MotoGP champion Francesco Bagnaia was the winner. He narrowed Jorge Martin’s point lead.
Bagnaia won the Assen Sprint from the beginning to the end after he topped two practice sessions in a row on Fridays for the first in his MotoGP Career. He also took pole position with a lap-record.
MOTOGP DUTCH
Martin was the first to notice the Ducati factory rider and the Ducati team, but the Ducati rider held off Martin’s early advances. The Ducati factory duo then swept past Martin by more than two seconds before the checkered flag.
Martin now trails by only 15 points heading into Sunday’s race in Assen.
Maverick vinales of Aprilia finished on the podium. Marquez fell out of the race for the podium after the first lap, and is now 44 pts behind the leader.
Bagnaia, Martin, Vinales, Alex Marquez et Marc Marquez were the first four to cross the start line of the 13th sprint.
Bagnaia’s lead was extended by Bagnaia after Martin made a turn 8 error on his first lap.
Martin took second place to begin the second lap, and Marc Marquez was eliminated at Turn 3 because he crashed after appearing to hit an inside kerb on his right leg.
Vinales drove his Aprilia factory up against the Gresini Ducati that Alex Marquez was still riding to grab third.
Bagnaia led Martin by half a sec at the start of Lap 5. Three laps later this lead grew to almost a whole second.
Ducati continued to increase its lead. However, he had to deal with some danger when he got a warning from the race officials for going over track limits.
He would however keep his clean streak going until the chequered Flag to win two sprint victories in 2024.
Martin was just 2.355s off Bagnaia’s Ducati on the Pramac, and Vinales finished third 1.7s away.
Enea Bastiani, who started the race in 11th place on the grid, finished fourth for Ducati’s second factory team. Fabio Di Giannantonio rounded out the top five on VR46 and was followed by Brad Binder from KTM.
Fabio Qartararo of Yamaha was promoted to the seventh position at chequered flag, after Alex Marquez had been hit with a 3-second penalty for not doing a full lap due to repeatedly breaking track limits.
Franco Morbidelli of Pramac won the sprint race, earning the final point.
Pedro Acosta could not do better than 10th in his Tech3 GasGas while Marco Bezzecchi, the sprint champion of Assen last year (VR46), was only able to finish 11th.
Luca Marini’s Honda RC213V broke down on the fifth circuit, forcing him to retire.
Aleix Espargaro fell out of contention for fifth place on the final circuit in a high-speed accident near Turn 15. This was his second crash this weekend, following an unfortunate incident on Friday.
Lorenzo Savadori of Aprilia also crashed from the race.
