The dream is alive! Jorge Martín won the Sprint race in Valencia and narrowed the gap to Pecco Bagnaia to 14 points. The Italian was fifth but maintains a “comfortable” lead over his biggest opponent in the race.
A second championship point for Bagnaia in this Sprint race, Martín’s speciality, but one in which the Italian has an advantage due to the points difference – 21 points in his favour – as well as his position on the starting grid: the current leader starts from second position, while the Pramac driver starts from sixth.
Martín has opted for a medium tyre on the front of the bike and a soft tyre on the back, while Bagnaia has opted for two medium tyres.
At the start Martín immediately gained a couple of positions and caught up with Bagnaia, wasting no time in overtaking the Italian, who responded straight away and retook the position, with Brad Binder also taking advantage to beat the #89. Marc Márquez also overtook the Spaniard, who was fifth.
Fabio Di Giannantonio was very close to Bagnaia, at 0.082s, in a fight reminiscent of what happened at Losail, where the #49 ended up beating his opponent on the factory Ducati.
With two laps to go Martín had 0.305s on Binder, second, while Bagnaia was already a long 3.6s away. If it ended like this, the fight for the championship would be down to the last race.
The final lap began with Martín well on course to win again.
And nothing changed, with Martín winning once again and Bagnaia finishing in fifth place despite pressure from DiGia.