MOTO GP

Pecco Bagnaia beats Jorge Martín in Austria and Marc Márquez puts on the show

Italian Pecco Bagnaia has taken a double at the Austrian Grand Prix by winning the race alone ahead of Jorge Martín, who he now has a five-point lead over in the 2024 MotoGP general classification. The podium was completed by Italian Enea Bastianini with Spaniard Marc Márquez fourth after having to make a spectacular comeback after suffering a mechanical failure at the start.

Jorge Martín started ahead of Pecco Bagnaia while Marc Márquez had a problem with the 'hole shot device' and was stuck quite stuck. To make matters worse, Franco Morbidelli touched him from behind and the two went very wide, with the eight-time champion returning to the track in 13th position. Enea Bastianini was third, followed by the official KTMs of Jack Miller and Brad Binder and the official Aprilias of Aleix Espargaró and Maverick Viñales.

At the start of the second lap, Bagnaia braked hard at turn 1 to snatch the lead from Martín. The Spaniard tried at the end of the lap, but was unable to consolidate his overtaking. All this while Enea Bastianini was waiting and clinging to them, forming a leading trio. Meanwhile, Marc Márquez was quickly gaining positions.

While Bastianini began to cut away from Pecco and Jorge, the 93 reached the group in which Marco Bezzecchi had passed the two Aprilias to stick to the KTMs, between which Binder passed Miller while Viñales went wide trying to pass Aleix and gave up the position to Márquez, who was already eighth and would soon pass the Granollers rider to go after Miller, who had also lost position to Bezzecchi. Luca Marini dropped out behind him. Márquez was trapped behind Jack Miller, who was concentrating all his efforts on defending himself from the rider from Lleida, sacrificing lap times. At one point they were slightly touching, and a lap later Miller pushed too hard and crashed, leaving Márquez behind Binder and Bezzecchi.

As the race got to the middle, Bagnaia began to put some distance between himself and Martín, raising the gap to over second. Behind him, after several laps of being Bezzecchi's shadow, Márquez finally managed to overtake him by braking too early at the entrance to the chicane.

In the blink of an eye he caught Binder, whom he passed without hesitation to move into fourth position. From then on, his race was overtaken, as Bastianini was almost nine seconds behind. Without any chance of a podium finish, he at least showed off a hellish pace that showed he was ready to fight for victory, closing the gap on the top three.

Up front, Pecco Bagnaia managed his lead of just over a second over Jorge Martín to take the win, with Enea Bastianini completing the podium without any major problems. Marc Márquez managed to close the gap by more than two seconds, but obviously his ceiling was in fourth position.

Brad Binder finished fifth and the best bike outside of Ducati, with Marco Bezzecchi sixth in one of his best races of the year. Maverick Viñales finished seventh and Franco Morbidelli snatched eighth position from Aleix Espargaró, with Álex Márquez rounding out the top 10 by beating Pol Espargaró and Miguel Oliveira. Pedro Acosta and Augusto Fernández scored points, with Álex Rins and Joan Mir out of the race. Raúl Fernández did not finish.

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