The Australian won a race where his teammate Bagnaia, Quartararo’s championship rival, crashed.
Fabio Quartararo can breathe. 8th in the Japanese Grand Prix, the world champion limited the damage… benefiting from the fall of his main rival, Francesco Bagnaia. Thus, if the Yamaha rider finishes far behind in Japan, he is performing an excellent operation in the championship with four races to go.
If Espargaro, 17 points behind Quartararo before the Japanese round, immediately buried his chances of taking the championship lead because of a technical problem on his Aprilia, Bagnaia, in the fight with Quartararo for 8th place, has him fell… on the very last lap. The Frenchman now has 219 points overall, 18 more than Bagnaia (201 points) and 25 more than the Spaniard Aleix Espargaro (Aprilia), who finished in 16th.
On the Motegi track, it was the Australian Jack Miller (Ducati) who won the bet this Sunday. South African Brad Binder, Miller’s future teammate at KTM next season, and Spaniard Jorge Martin (Ducati-Pramac) complete the podium.
Score fourth
Under a sun that returned after the downpours the day before during qualifying, Marc Marquez, back in competition last week, took fourth place in the race. Starting in the lead, the six-time world champion lost control from the first laps of the race lead. He finished his first race in Japan since his return to Aragon last weekend, where he had to retire after a collision with Quartararo.
For his 100th race in MotoGP, the other Frenchman on the grid Johann Zarco (Ducati-Pramac), who started second, finished in 11th place. In Moto2, the Japanese Ai Ogura (Honda) pocketed his third victory of the season and is two points behind the leader of the general classification, the Spaniard Augusto Fernandez, second on Sunday.
In Moto3, the Spanish leader in the championship Izan Guevara (Gasgas), who started 9th, won with more than half a second ahead of the Italian Dennis Foggia (Leopard). Thanks to this second consecutive victory after the GP of Aragon, Guevara takes off in the general standings, ahead of his teammate Sergio Garcia, 4th in the race in Japan.
