Francesco Bagnaia is again the MotoGP World Champion. In a race at the Valencia GP with several incidents, the Italian secured the win, while his rival Jorge Martín crashed early on, immediately taking himself out of contention.
Thanks to a strong start, Bagnaia (Ducati) defended his pole position successfully, with Martín (Prima Pramac/Ducati) closely behind in second. The title fight was directly on the track.
A crucial error from Martín in the third lap occurred. The Spanish rider attempted to attack Bagnaia heading into turn one, but the move went awry, dropping him to eighth place. This put Bagnaia much closer to the title, but with 25 laps remaining, everything was still up in the air.
Benefiting from the situation were the Red Bull KTM riders, with Brad Binder and Jack Miller taking second and third positions, respectively.
It was the end of the line for Martín on the seventh lap. In an attempt to overtake Marc Márquez (Repsol Honda), the two collided and retired. The title was now in Bagnaia’s hands, although he was shortly overtaken by Binder.
The positions at the top remained stable until Binder made a mistake in turn ten on the 15th lap, promoting Miller to first. Bagnaia moved up to second, and Johann Zarco (Prima Pramac/Ducati) to third, while the South African dropped to sixth. With nine laps to go, Miller crashed in turn 11, putting Bagnaia in the lead again. Binder then returned to the podium positions.
Five laps from the end, Binder was overtaken by Fabio di Giannantonio, who had his sights set on the podium in his farewell race for Gresini. In the final phase of the race, the top three were separated by less than a second, leading to an exciting finish.
Di Giannantonio passed Zarco and attempted to catch Bagnaia but couldn’t prevent the champion from winning. Zarco completed the podium. Binder finished fourth, and Raúl Fernández took the CryptoDATA RNF MotoGP Team Aprilia to fifth place.
Further back, Franco Morbidelli bid farewell to Monster Energy Yamaha with a seventh-place finish. In a race with seven retirements, everyone who finished scored points, including Pol Espargaró (GasGas Tech3/KTM), who crashed two laps from the end in his last MotoGP race.