This GP in Qatar showed a little of what MotoGP is all about and what can happen in the fight for the title, with Francesco Bagnaia getting the better of Jorge Martin. The Italian led for much of the race but finished second, beaten by Fabio Di Giannantonio, while Jorge Martin had an absolutely disastrous race, finishing tenth.
Seven points separate Pecco Bagnaia and Jorge Martin in the standings and with three rounds to go all scenarios are open, especially after #89 halved the gap to the lead by winning the Sprint, while #1 was fifth.
And the suspense is running high for this sunday’s race, especially after Martin forced an overtake on Bagnaia, with the Italian expressing his displeasure at the way it happened. In fact, the Ducati Lenovo rider has already “warned” that he’s ready for a fight with his opponent over what happened: It’s great that he came at me to start, now I know it can be done and I like this situation. I think it’s great that he did it, so it’s opening up a situation that could be interesting for tomorrow.
Before the start of sunday’s race, a note on the statistics: Bagnaia won two more races on Sunday, while Martín in turn has twice as many victories in the Sprint races.
And there was no shortage of ingredients to spice up the battle at Losail, with Bagnaia starting from fourth on the grid and Martín alongside the Italian in fifth.
And lo and behold, everything was in place for the start of the race, with more than 55,000 spectators on site to watch the battle live:
The start of the race could hardly have gone well for Bagnaia who immediately took the lead in the race, unlike Martín who was eighth and at the end of the first lap it was already 1.471s separating Martin from the front of the race.
With two laps completed, Martin was closer to 2s behind the leader, who in turn was leading the race and had even set the fastest lap with 1:53.468s.
Johann Zarco, Martin’s teammate, went wide and this allowed the Spaniard to climb up to seventh, but with three laps completed he was 2.363s off the top of the race. Marc Márquez was sixth and 0.443s behind Martín.
Márquez was Martín’s next “victim” and he moved up to sixth place. Brad Binder promised to be a tougher challenge, at 1.4s. It wasn’t long before Luca Marini was the next challenger, as Binder took the opportunity to move up to fourth place, relegating Marini to being chased by Martín.
Five laps down and Bagnaia was leading the race by 0.644s over Fabio Di Giannatonio and 3.062s over Martin.
Marquez in seventh was giving Martin a fight and 0.315s separated the former world champion from the Pramac rider, who was gradually getting further and further away from the leader: 3.303s separated Martin from Bagnaia, who had a lead of around four tenths of a second over DiGia.
At the start of the ninth lap Bagnaia had DiGia by 0.191s, but the world champion was showing fibre and wasn’t allowing the #49 to get too close, while Martin had a new pursuer: Maverick Viñales, who was aiming for the #89. 0.149s separated the Aprilia rider from sixth place.
Viñales threatened at any moment to overtake Martín, who was now 5.100s off the lead.
On the first sector of the 11th lap DiGia saw the lead down to 0.079s, but Bagnaia remained solid and soon afterwards Martín dropped two positions and fell to eighth. A disastrous race for the apaniard, who now had Fabio Quartararo trailing him by 0.186s,
Martin was at this stage the slowest rider on the track, the only one riding inside the second 55, but Martín still managed to beat Márquez, but was beaten soon after by Quartararo and was still in eighth. Jack Miller was ninth at 0.104s and… soon lost a position, dropping to ninth, with Zarco able to act as a “guard” for his teammate.
Bagnaia, meanwhile, was on a roll and holding off Di Giannantonio, with the Gresini rider trailing by 0.234s.
With nine laps to go, that was it for the two rivals:
Bagnaia remained in front with his gap to DiGia varying between 1 and 2 tenths. Martin had Miller at 1.4s and saw the dream of the World Championship very far away: if the race ended now, 25 points would separate Bagnaia from Martín!
DiGia was trying his best, but Bagnaia was on another level and wasn’t giving his opponent a chance, at a time when Martin’s problems promised to get worse: Enea Bastianini beat Zarco and then wasted no time in beating Martin, who was in tenth place with five laps to go.
On the following lap DiGia confirmed the overtake on Bagnaia and then successfully defended his opponent’s attack on the factory Ducati. In the space of two sectors the #49 closed the gap to 2.5s, with the #1 going wide in the escape area and, were it not for Marini’s large lead, the scenario could have been much worse.
The gap in the standings was now virtually 21 points, as Martin remained in tenth place.
There were no more major changes until the end and Martín ended a disastrous race in 10th, with Fabio Di Giannantonio keeping his title aspirations alive, despite the huge gap that now separates the top two.