The Spanish Jorge Martín (Ducati Desmosedici GP24) He achieved his first victory of the season by winning the Portuguese MotoGP Grand Prix at the Portimao circuit and is the new leader of the provisional world championship classification.
Martín dominated from the first to the last lap and was accompanied on the podium by the Italian Enea Bastianini (Ducati Desmosedici GP24) and Pedro Acosta (Gas Gas RC 16)the only debutant in the MotoGP category, who achieved his first podium, the third youngest, after the American Randy Mamola and the Argentine Eduardo Salatino.
The Spanish Jorge Martín fulfilled his objective and surpassed the Italians Enea Bastianini and ‘Pecco’ Bagnaia at the start, with Maverick Vinalesthe winner of the sprint race, very attentive to his rivals and close to them, and in which Marc Márquez gained three positions already in the initial corners.
Martín tried to play his trick by starting from the front to impose a strong pace to which both Viñales, Bastianini and Bagnaia responded almost immediately, who positioned themselves behind him, although they could not prevent him from already having a half-second advantage in the initial turn.
The Spaniard Alex Márquez crashed in turn five of the second lap, although without letting go of the bike he managed to return to the race in the last positions, although with seven to go he ended up taking the road to the workshop street without power conclude the test.
In just three laps the positions began to be clearly defined, with Jorge Martín leading, followed by Viñales, Bastianini, Bagnaia and Márquez ahead of the official KTM riders, the Australian Jack Miller and the South African Brad Binder, with Pedro Acosta (Gas Gas RC 16), the only MotoGP debutant in 2024, eighth, being the reference for MotoGP riders Yamaha, the Frenchman Fabio Quartararo and the Spanish Alex Rins.
The initial falls of Alex Márquez and the Italian Franco Morbidelli (Ducati Desmosedici GP24) were joined shortly after by that of the Spanish Raúl Fernández (Aprilia RS-GP), who was unable to continue.
Unable to consolidate his escape, Jorge Martín held on at the head of the race, but without managing to separate himself from his pursuers, who seemed to take it a little easier to conserve the tires until the final stretch of the race.
That tranquility at the head of the race did not occur in the rest of the positions, where Binder and Acosta took advantage of a Miller error to surpass him in the fifth of the 25 race.
Knowing from the warnings from the workshop street that he had not managed to open a gap, Jorge Martín put himself in a more conservative mode, with Maverick Viñales close to him and Bastianini and Bagnaia a little further back.
With a difference of two seconds, Marc Márquez led a second group that also included Brad Binder and Pedro ‘Tiburón’ Acosta, who had left behind Jack Miller, already at the head of a third group.
On the seventh lap Acosta set the fastest lap of the race (1:38.901) to catch up and overtake Márquez in the braking rush of turn one, although the eight-time world champion stayed close to him, probably with a more tactical approach. conservative to avoid making mistakes.
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The world champion in title was gradually left behind, leaving ahead Martín, Viñales and Bastianini, and behind Acosta, Márquez and Binderand already more than four and a half seconds behind Miller, Quartararo and Rins.
Acosta and Márquez left the South African Binder off the hook to ‘hunt’ Bagnaia with some ease in the ninth lap and the Italian was warned from his workshop that the ‘Shark of Puerto de Mazarrón’ was close to his slipstream.
At the beginning of lap twelve Acosta tried to accelerate his braking at the end of the straight to overtake Bagnaia, but he ‘snuck in’ a little and had to give in, although he did not give up, with Marc Márquez as the expectant protagonist of the action. .
Little by little, tenth by tenth, Jorge Martín was able to consolidate the first position, ahead of Viñales and Bastianini, who had almost two seconds of advantage over the trio led by Bagnaia.
The pace and control that Jorge Martín showed during the race was such that in the fifteenth lap he set the fastest lap of the race (1:38.830) to consolidate his lead, although Neither Viñales nor Bastianini threw in the towel and, in the chasing trio, Acosta sneaked back in in his attempt to withstand Bagnaia’s slipstream.
A lap later Maverick Viñales ‘answered’ Martín’s attack with a new fast lap (1:38.818), although the former’s lead did not seem to be in question.
After much trying, in turn three of the twenty-first lap, with four to go, Pedro Acosta managed to overtake ‘Pecco’ Bagnaia to place fourth and begin to distance himself from the Italian, who then had to defend himself from the attacks of a Marc Márquez timidly tried it on that same lap.
Acosta overtook Bagnaia and on that same lap he put more than a second behind him to consolidate fourth place, since the leading trio was already unreachable.
But the fight between Márquez and Bagnaia ended badly for both when the former once again overtook the latter in turn five and the Italian lay on top of the Spaniard, touching each other and ending up on the ground, although Márquez returned to the race and ‘Pecco’ got on his motorcycle but to return to his workshop.
Marc Márquez finished in sixteenth position
It was not the last mishap because on the last lap, in the first corner, Maverick Viñales slipped under braking and ended up crashing when braking in the dirty area of the escape area with some technical problem on his motorcycle.
Nobody questioned the victory of Jorge Martín, who was accompanied on the podium by Enea Bastianini and Pedro Acosta, the first podium for the MotoGP debutant, with Brad Binder fourth, ahead of Jack Miller, Marco Bezzecchi, Fabio Quartararo, Aleix Espargaró ( Aprilia RS-GP), Miguel Oliveira (Aprilia RS-GP) and Fabio di Giannantonio (Ducati Desmosedici GP23) in the top ten positions.
Augusto Fernández (Gas Gas RC 16) was eleventh, beating Joan Mir (Honda RC 213 V) and Alex Rins (Yamaha YZR M 1).
2024-03-24 15:16:54
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