MADRID, 8 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Spanish rider Marc Márquez (Ducati) won the MotoGP race of the San Marino Grand Prix on Sunday, the thirteenth round of the World Championship, achieving his second consecutive victory in an event in which strategy played a bad trick on the leader of the World Championship, Jorge Martín (Ducati), who finished fifteenth.
Seven days after breaking a drought of almost three years at MotorLand Aragón, the rider from Cervera, who stormed to the front after the chaos unleashed by the rain, returned to the top of the podium, where he was accompanied by Italians Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati), now just seven points behind the leader, and Enea Bastianini (Ducati).
Meanwhile, Jorge Martín could only manage fifteenth after making a mistake in his bet with the appearance of rain; the Madrid native changed to wet tyres with the first drops, but had to change bikes again when he saw that his strategy had been wrong, riding much slower than the rest. Even so, he remains in the lead with 312 points, seven more than ‘Pecco’ and 53 ahead of Márquez.
With rain looming over Misano, Bagnaia held on to the lead once the lights went out, and hostilities broke out behind him. A collision between Italian Enea Bastianini (Ducati) and Marc Márquez was resolved without problems, and Pedro Acosta (KTM) and Franco Morbidelli (Ducati) also had their ups and downs.
Just a few laps later, the Murcian crashed in the middle of the fight for podium positions, and two laps later the race was over for the Italian. Up ahead, Bagnaia and Martín continued in the lead, and only the rain, which was getting worse, changed the situation.
The San Sebastián de los Reyes rider was the first to go through the pits, 20 laps from the checkered flag, to change bikes, and Márquez took the lead after overtaking ‘Pecco’, the South African Brad Binder (KTM) and Bastianini in a single lap.
Martín, riding a new bike with wet tyres, was going much slower than his rivals and was forced to recover the first machine to have a chance. However, it was not ready when it entered the garage and his chances of winning vanished.
Thus, everything was left between Márquez and Bagnaia, who also began to gain time on Bastianini, who was in third place. Little by little, the eight-time world champion opened up a gap on the reigning champion and managed to secure his second consecutive victory.
Alex Márquez (Ducati) finished sixth and Pol Espargaró (KTM) rounded out the top 10. Maverick Viñales (Aprilia) was sixteenth; Pedro Acosta (KTM) finished seventeenth; Raúl Fernández (Aprilia) was eighteenth and Alex Rins (Yamaha) was nineteenth. Aleix Espargaró (Aprilia) and Augusto Fernández (KTM) did not finish the race.