Bagnaia Dominates in the Season Opener
The reigning world champion Pecco Bagnaia won the Portuguese Grand Prix to round off a perfect weekend and take all 37 available points between Saturday’s sprint and the feature race on Sunday.
Image via MotoGP.com
Aprillia’s Maverick Vinales started his season off strong with a second place after finishing 0.687s behind the race winner. VR46 rider Marco Bezzecchi rounded off the podium after an impressive early launch on KTM’s Jack Miller for third place.
The poleman Marc Marquez had a slower start off the line compared to the Ducati’s alongside him on the front row, but he still featured in the fight for the lead very early on. The poleman’s race came to a conclusion on lap 3 when he clipped the back of Jorge Martin and then crashed into the home hero Miguel Oliveira, sending both himself and Oliveira into the gravel.
Marquez was shown to be checking on an injured Oliveira after the crash and later took himself to the RNF pit box to apologise to the team. The FIM Stewards confirmed after the race that the Repsol Honda rider will take a double long lap penalty during next week’s Argentinian Grand Prix.
The Marquez-Oliveira incident also took Jorge Martin out of contention early on as he was pushed wide by the first Marquez impact. Martin later crashed out of the race on lap 19 as it was suspected he was riding without a front wing after the contact with Marquez.
Image via the-race.com
Behind the top three, there was a six-rider battle for 4th place in which Pramac’s Johann Zarco would prevail at the very end of the race, snatching it from the younger of the Marquez brothers, Gresini’s Alex Marquez.
The Factory KTMs came home in 6th and 7th with Brad Binder fighting through neck pain all weekend to come out on top of his new teammate Jack Miller who was one of the big surprises with his fast pace throughout the weekend.
It was a tough race for 2021 World Champion Fabio Quartararo. With a poor start that dragged him back to 17th in the first lap, he fought back to 10th where he spent a number of laps behind VR46 Rider Luca Marini. Once he’d gotten past Marini, he was then able to get past Aleix Espargaro to bring it home in 8th.
Marini had one of the toughest weekends of his MotoGP career after crashing out of the Saturday sprint and then finishing the weekend by crashing out of the race on lap 22. An unusual weekend for a rider who did not DNF in a MotoGP race for the first 18 months of his career.
Image via @box_repsol on twitter
LCR’s Alex Rins headed up the other two Hondas of Joan Mir (Repsol Honda) and Takaaki Nakagami (LCR) to close out the top 12. Mir served a long-lap penalty for his collision with Quartararo during the Saturday sprint.
This year’s sole rookie, Augusto Fernandez, finished his first MotoGP race in 13th ahead of the second Factory Yamaha of Franco Morbidelli who was the last of the finishers.
The list of non-finishers was completed by both Raul Fernandez and Fabio Di Giannantonio with the former crashing out on lap 24 and the latter bringing his Gresini Ducati back into pit lane after just a few laps with a suspected technical problem.
We don’t have long to wait for our next dose of MotoGP action as the season continues in Argentina next weekend! Will Pecco dominate again? Or will someone else take the crown in Argentina?
