Bagnaia wins at home, Quartararo consolidates his leadership and Aleix Espargaró adds another podium

Bagnaia has two victories this season, Spain and Italy, while Quartararo consolidates his first position in the championship by adding four more points than Aleix Espargaró, who equals Marc Márquez and the Italian Andrea Dovizioso as the only riders in the MotoGP category to achieve four consecutive podium finishes in one season.

The Spaniard Jorge Martín (Ducati Desmosedici GP22) had to lose three positions in the starting line-up to comply with the sanction imposed by the Race Direction after lapping slowly during the third round of free practice, so he went from the eleventh place he achieved in qualifying to fourteenth, with which riders like Marc Márquez (Repsol Honda RC 213 V) gained a position.

Márquez was also in the news because on Saturday, after the official classification, he announced that he had to undergo another operation after having suffered a significant rotation of the humerus of his arm, a fact confirmed by the doctor Joaquin Sanchez Sotelofrom the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, in the United States, who will be in charge of performing the surgical intervention next Thursday.

Despite knowing that he will surely have to be discharged for four or five months, which is the recovery period that the pilot is expected to face, as long as everything goes well, since it is still a somewhat complicated intervention , Marc Márquez wanted to compete in the Italian race to help the team and Repsol Honda and he did so from the first seconds by gaining four positions in the braking section at the end of the straight, where the first was the Italian Luca Marini (Ducati Desmosedici GP22).

The Italian Fabio di Giannantonio (Ducati Desmosedici GP21), who had been the fastest in practice, was overtaken by both Luca Marini and his teammate, Marco Bezzecchi, who completed the initial lap first, in which Marc Márquez lost some positions and passed tenth

Aleix Espargaró (Aprilia RS-GP), who was seventh in practice but said he had pace for the race, started well and by the end of the opening lap he had already made up three positions and was fourth, between Di Giannantonio and the world leader, the Frenchman Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha YZR M 1), who shortly after rose to third place by beating the Spanish and the author of the “pole position”.

Quartararo managed to overtake Marini on the fourth lap and one later the race lost one of its protagonists, Spaniard Pol Espargaró (Repsol Honda RC 213 V), who crashed in the new corner when he was too far behind for him, and moments later he was the MotoGP world champion in 2020, Joan Mir (Suzuki GSX RR), the one that crashed in turn one, the San Donato curve.

On that same lap, the eighth, the other Suzuki rider also crashed, Alex Rinsin his case at turn twelve.

But the surprise came from behind with the Italian “Pecco” Bagnaia, who was taking account of all his rivals until he slipped behind the motorcycle Bezzecchiwhich he overtook on the ninth lap to try to change the pace and go solo on the way to what would be his second victory of the season.

For those moments at the head of the race a quintet was formed with Bagnaia, Bezzecchi, Quartararo, Marini and Aleix Espargaró and almost three seconds behind was a trio with Frenchman Johann Zarco (Ducati Desmosedici GP22), Italian Enea Bastianini (Ducati Desmosedici GP21) and South African Brad Binder (KTM RC 16).

Bagnaia reaped the rewards of his strong pace in a short time, since by the twelfth lap he already had a one-second advantage over Quartararo, Marini, Bezzecchi and Aleix Espargaró, whom they “hooked” from behind Zarco y Bastianini, that ended on the ground in turn four of the fourteenth lap.

The final laps had the only question of whether Quartararo would be able to catch up with Bagnaia and if Aleix Espargaró could beat Marco Bezzecchi to go in search of the Frenchman.

Espargaró got the third position in the seventeenth lap, in which he was 1.4 behind Fabio Quartararo but still with six laps ahead to try to catch up with the Frenchman, his great rival in the provisional classification of the World Cup, in which both occupy the first two positions.

But the pace of his rivals was very consistent and Aleix Espargaró could not do anything to catch up and, quite the contrary, he had to defend himself, successfully, from the attacks of the Ducati riders Marco Bezzecchi, Johann Zarco y Luca Marini, to add his fourth consecutive podium and the fifth of the season.

Fourth place went to Johann Zarco, followed by Marco Bezzecchi, Luca Marini, Brad Binder, Takaaki Nakagami, Miguel Oliveira and Marc Marquez, who finished tenth.

Behind the Repsol Honda rider, Fabio di Giannantonio and the Spaniard Maverick Vinales (Aprilia RS-GP) tied at one thousandth of a second and had to define each other’s position with the “photo finish”, which opted for the Italian’s side by one thousandth of a second.

Jorge Martín (Ducati Desmosedici GP22) was thirteenth, ahead of Alex Marquez (Honda RC 213 V) and with Raúl Fernández (KTM RC 16), twenty-first.