Bagnaia Wins At Portimao To Hand Ducati Constructors Title
Calum Gill 14:36 07/11/2021
Francesco Bagnaia eased to victory in the second Portimao race of the 2021 MotoGP campaign, with Ducati clinching the constructors’ title thanks to a rare crash for Yamaha’s riders’ champion Fabio Quartararo.
Bagnaia actually briefly lost the lead at the start, bogging down off the line relative to Jack Miller, but immediately reclaimed the spot by cutting back on the inside of Miller coming out of the first corner. Half a lap later, Miller was taken care of by Joan Mir through the sweeping Turn 8 right-hander, and the duo ahead of the Aussie swiftly began to establish a gap over the chasing pack. However, Bagnaia seemed to have something extra relative to Mir, and the Suzuki man could only hang with the leader for a couple of laps.
The gap stayed pretty much constant until a red flag ended the race with two laps to go, courtesy of a collision between KTM stablemates Miguel Oliveira and Iker Lecuona. Lecuona, who’d had his race compromised by running massively wide from a promising position on the seventh lap, wiped out home hero Oliveira in an ill-advised overtaking attempt at the hairpin-like Turn 13. His bike got briefly caught in Oliveira’s, and the Portuguese rider was stretchered off from the site of the accident, although TV then showed Oliveira sitting upright and presumably receiving an apology from Lecuona, before limping off.
Newly-crowned champion Quartararo had looked a no-brainer victory contender through practice, but was only seventh in qualifying, and didn’t make a good enough start to preserve his win hopes. Falling down to eighth, he picked up two places when a Lecuona overtaking attempt took himself and Pol Espargaró wide, but Quartararo then got stuck behind the Ducati of Pramac rider Jorge Martín. An error into Turn 13 invited Johann Zarco through, and though Quartararo then repassed Zarco, his compatriot got back ahead again and got through on Martin. Quartararo swiftly did the same, and then dropped his bike at Turn 5.
This virtually guaranteed Ducati its constructors’ title, which was confirmed with the red flag, while also ensuring it now has a massive buffer in the teams’ standings coming into Valencia. Behind Miller and Mir, the biggest intrigue was in the fight for third, which ultimately boiled down to a duel between Miller and an impressive Álex Márquez, in what was the LCR Honda man’s best race of the season.
Márquez, however, came up just short of a first Honda podium of the season not to be scored by his brother Marc - currently out with a concussion - as the red flag denied him a chance to retaliate on Miller’s overtake with seven laps to go. Zarco was classified fifth, ahead of Espargaró, who’d fought his way past Martin just before the red flag. Álex Rins (Suzuki), Enea Bastianini (Avintia Esponsorama) and Brad Binder (KTM) completed the top 10, with Binder the only KTM finisher - as Tech3 KTM’s Danilo Petrucci had crashed on the opening lap.
Aprilia’s Portimao race proved pretty much an all-round disaster. Maverick Viñales trudged along to a 16th-place result (and seemingly struck by some sort of unseen issue moments before the red flag), while Aleix Espargaró slid off at Turn 1 on the eighth lap mere moments after nudging ahead of Franco Morbidelli.
