The Catalan recovered from a fall and took advantage of Quartararo’s ‘zero’ to cut points in the championship
Maverick Viñales gets on the podium
MADRID, 26 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Italian rider Francesco ‘Pecco’ Bagnaia (Ducati) has conquered this Sunday the victory in the chaotic MotoGP race of the Dutch Grand Prix, eleventh round of the Motorcycle World Championship, in which the leader of the championship, the Frenchman Fabio Quartararo ( Yamaha), went to the ground taking ahead the Spanish Aleix Espargaró (Aprilia), who knew how to recover finishing fourth after a spectacular last double overtaking.
The race in Assen seemed ruined for the first two classified in the World Championship at turn 5 of the sixth lap, when the Nice one went to the ground trying to overtake the Catalan, who was also dragged into the gravel. However, both were able to return to the track, the first in last position and the second fifteenth.
With the bike destroyed, ‘El Diablo’ withstood the arrival of the rain to try to reign in chaos, but the first drops on the Dutch track only caused a new crash, head first, at the same point as the first . This time yes, the ‘high side’ put an end to the adventure of a Quartararo who only risked at the request of Yamaha and who leaves Assen with a ‘zero’.
Meanwhile, Aleix focused on continuing to climb positions to try to subtract as many points as possible from the leader of the general classification, although he never imagined what was to come. With 17 laps to go he was positioned eighth, and with just three laps to go he was running seventh.
On the final lap, he overtook Jorge Martin (Ducati) to gain a position, and at the chicane he made the best overtake of the year by passing both Australian Jack Miller (Ducati) and South African Brad Binder (KTM) to finish fourth. .
With this, the man from Granollers (151) cut 13 points from Quartararo (172), from whom he is now separated by 21 points, all before the summer break. “I saw that today I had the best bike. There was a moment when I was fourteenth and I told myself that I had to go flat out,” he said.
‘Pecco’ Bagnaia, who signed his third victory of the season and the sixth of the year for Ducati, will also leave with a good taste in his mouth; the also Italian Marco Bezzecchi (Ducati) and the Spanish Maverick Viñales (Aprilia), who achieved his 69th podium in the championship.
Among the rest of the Spaniards, Jorge Martín (Ducati) finished seventh, Joan Mir (Suzuki) finished eighth, Alex Rins (Suzuki) finished tenth and Alex Márquez (Honda) was fifteenth. Raúl Fernández (KTM) could not finish.