Bagnaia Fends Off Marquez To Take Maiden MotoGP Win
Calum Gill 14:26 12/09/2021
Ducati rider Francesco Bagnaia claimed a long-awaited first MotoGP victory at Aragon, defeating Marc Márquez in a phenomenal late battle.
Championship leader Fabio Quartararo faded to an eventual eighth place at what he’d described as his “worst track” on the schedule, but retains a 53-point lead heading into the final five rounds. Starting from pole, Bagnaia was challenged into Turn 1 by team-mate Jack Miller, but the Aussie had to rein in his inside-line lunge to avoid a clash, and allowed Honda man Márquez to get through into second place.
Bagnaia and Márquez soon established a gap over Miller while running in tandem, with Bagnaia occasionally pulling out a few tenths over Marquez as they made their breakaway but always being reeled in. As the race approached its halfway point, Miller ran badly wide at the Turns 16-17 long left-hander, permitting Joan Mir (Suzuki) and Aleix Espargaró (Aprilia) to come through, but with Bagnaia and Márquez already three seconds up the road and monopolising the fight for victory.
Mir completed the top three four seconds adrift of the winner, with Espargaró briefly putting up a fight but soon having to settle for fourth, and Miller coming home in fifth. Enea Bastianini (Avintia Ducati) recorded the best finish of his rookie season as he fought off KTM rider Brad Binder for sixth place. A long and arduous race for championship leader Quartararo ended with him beating Jorge Martín (Pramac Ducati) to eighth by 0.040 seconds. Quartararo had dropped from third to seventh at the start, and was then gradually overtaken by the KTMs of Iker Lecuona and Binder, before spending much of his race trying to fight off Bastianini.
Though Bastianini ultimately got past despite being delayed by a duel with Takaaki Nakagami, Quartararo inherited a place through Tech3 rider Lecuona running badly wide at the ‘reverse corkscrew’ and then also reeled in an increasingly grip-less Martín, before fending him off in the final lap. Suzuki rider Álex Rins, who won at Aragon last year, made progress from 20th to 12th early on, but was unable to do more - although he did beat out Pol Espargaró (Honda) for the spot.
Pramac Ducati man Johann Zarco was the only rider to deviate from the grid’s overwhelming preference of hard front and soft rear tyre selections, instead going for the medium soft. It did not pay off, with Zarco recording comfortably his worst finish of the season in 17th. He did, however, at least narrowly defeat Aprilia debutant Maverick Viñales, whose first race on the RS-GP finished 27.2 seconds off the winner. While the preceding Moto2 race had been a crashfest, MotoGP managed to keep attrition down, with only Álex Márquez (LCR Honda) - a standout at Aragon last year - and Petronas Yamaha stand-in Jake Dixon crashing out, both before lap three.
