Bagnaia Leads All-Ducati Podium As Rossi Bids Farewell To MotoGP
Calum Gill 14:18 14/11/2021
Francesco Bagnaia led a walkover Ducati 1-2-3 in the 2021 MotoGP season finale at Valencia, as his mentor Valentino Rossi bowed out with a 10th-place finish.
It was only the fourth top-10 finish of Rossi’s final season, the Italian seeing off another protege of his, Franco Morbidelli, before receiving a grandstand farewell. Rookie poleman Jorge Martín was perfect off the line, his lead aided by nearest rival Bagnaia dropping behind Jack Miller and Joan Mir. Yet Miller was right with Martín in no time, taking the lead at Turn 1 on the second lap, only to run wide at the next corner and allow Martín back through on exit - before Mir relegated him to third with a forceful Turn 4 overtake.
Bagnaia was back through on Miller at Turn 1 a lap later, and then took care of the Suzuki of Mir on the straight with ease the next time around, establishing himself as Martin’s closest adversary once more. The pace set by the Ducati pair at that point began to stretch the leading pack, with only Mir’s team-mate Álex Rins - who had overtaken the 2020 champion - managing to stay close until he was left raging in the gravel moments after a Turn 6 crash on the 11th lap.
Rins’ crash left the Ducatis with an eight tenths of a second buffer to Mir, and while this was eroded somewhat as Martin worked to keep Bagnaia behind, the rookie finally yielded on lap 15 as Bagnaia bravely stuck his front wheel down the Pramac bike’s inside at the final corner. He quickly pulled out a half-second gap over Martín, but Martín closed back up and kept Bagnaia honest for a few laps, only to finally start dropping back for good in the final stages. Subsequently, this meant he nearly fell into the clutches of a resurgent Miller, who had pulled off a final-corner move of his own on Mir to secure Ducati’s first MotoGP podium lockout.
Ultimately, Miller came up short and completed a Ducati top three split by just 0.823 seconds, the small gap aided by a gingerly final lap for Bagnaia. Despite this, Mir finished over five seconds down as best of the rest, fading noticeably in the second half of the race, and having to fight off the rider who succeeded him as MotoGP champion, Fabio Quartararo, late on. On an uncharacteristically difficult weekend, Quartararo was still comfortably the top Yamaha in fifth, while Johann Zarco (Pramac) made it four 2021-spec Ducatis in the top six.
Brad Binder moved up into fifth place early on on his KTM, but lost precious places running wide during the opening lap. He did recover to seventh, however, with none of his fellow KTMs even breaching the top 13. Enea Bastianini (Avintia Esponsorama) completed his impressive late-season streak by taking eighth from Aleix Espargaró (Aprilia) late on, but it was not enough to prevent Martín from beating him to rookie of the year honours. With Marc Márquez’s season ending prematurely due to a training crash and Pol Espargaró pulling out of the Valencia race due to a painful practice crash, Honda was represented only by the two LCR riders in the race.
Takaaki Nakagami crashed out early on while chasing Rossi through the same Turn 6 that would claim Rins’ Suzuki, while Álex Márquez wound up finishing 13th, half a second down on Petronas Yamaha’s Andrea Dovizioso, who posted the best finish of his MotoGP comeback so far. The other rider besides Rossi who’s almost certainly finishing his MotoGP career this weekend, Danilo Petrucci took 18th and last place, potentially struggling for fitness after a bruising practice fall. He was three places down on Tech3 KTM team-mate Iker Lecuona, who will be riding for Honda in World Superbikes next year.
