A dream weekend for Jorge Martin at Misano, with the Prima Pramac Racing rider securing a «triple crown». After pole position with a record lap, victory in the Sprint race, victory in sunday’s race was the icing on the cake.
Martin got off to a good start and secured the lead in the early stages of the race, and by the end of the first lap he had Francesco Bagnaia behind him, with Marco Bezzecchi in third. Brad Binder was already fourth ahead of KTM test rider Dani Pedrosa.
Maverick Viñales was sixth and Miguel Oliveira seventh, after a good start that earned him three positions.
With three laps completed, Bezzecchi was the fastest lapper for the time being. Bagnaia, second, was 0.343s behind Martin, and Bezzecchi was 0.565s behind the pole position winner and winner of yesterday’s Sprint race. On the following lap, the fourth, Martín set the best lap of the race so far.
On the fifth lap Bezzecchi briefly moved up to second place, but he widened his path at the next corner and «opened» the door for Bagnaia to retake second place. The #1 was then with red sectors and shortened the gap to Martín to 0.181s, but this stabilised back within three tenths… despite Bagnaia setting the fastest lap of the race so far.
Then disaster struck for Brad Binder, with the south african crashing out when he was fourth. Pedrosa was once again the best KTM rider on track, and Viñales entered the top five.
Nevertheless, Binder rejoined the race.
And… the KTM terror didn’t end there: Jack Miller was involved in a crash with Michele Pirro and both were out of the race. A disastrous minute for the austrian manufacturer.
It wasn’t long before Marc Marquez took advantage of a mistake by Oliveira, who went wide and ended up being overtaken by Marquez, who was now in sixth place.
The GP was roughly halfway through and so was the top ten:
Note to Pedrosa who was very close to Bezzecchi but quickly lost time, probably due to a mistake.
Two laps later another rider was out, Pol Espargaro, who joined Joan Mir, who had retired after ten laps.
With ten laps to go Martin now seemed to have a bigger gap to manage the race, with a 1.628s lead over Bagnaia. Bezzecchi, meanwhile, was looking at the world champion, who was just 0.111s behind.
The overtake came shortly afterwards, with Bezzecchi in second and «inheriting» more than 2s off Martin, who was in control. The warning signs were already alive for the #1, which had Pedrosa at 0.694s.
Despite the effort and physical difficulties, Bagnaia was managing to give a good response and was able to gain time and «get away» from Pedrosa, with the #26 being 1.068s down at this stage of the race.
But… everything could change. From one moment to the next, almost, the gap between Bagnaia and Pedrosa dropped to three tenths. Everything was wide open. Note to Oliveira, now sixth in the race after overtaking M. Márquez. Viñales, in fifth, was 1.271s behind.
With three laps to go, that was the top five:
With two laps to go, eyes were once again focussed on the battle between Bagnaia and Pedrosa: just 0.224s separated the riders, while M. Marquez was also with Raul Fernandez and Luca Marini threatening seventh place.
The race ended shortly afterwards, with Martin unsurprisingly taking the win. Bagnaia held on to third place after a lot of effort.