Two-time back-to-back world champion, Francesco “Pecco“ Bagnaia took a dominant victory at Mugello. The Ducati rider took the lead from the third corner during the opening lap and led to the finish for another victory in the championship.
Qualifying Recap: Pole for Martin, Bagnaia demoted to 5th due to penalty
The fastest was Jorge Martin from Pramac taking pole, Bagnaia followed close behind him but earned a three-place grid penalty for impeding Alex Marquez during practice two days earlier. The Italian driver commented in response to the penalty imposed, “These clown penalties are something useless”.
The Race: Masterful performance by Bagnaia, Bastianini was great in the finish
Bagnaia started Sunday’s race in dominant fashion, breaking into first place by the third corner. The current championship leader, Jorge Martin, was closely following Bagnaia throughout, and with three laps to go, closed the gap to only three tenths of a second. Bagnaia having carefully saved his tires, managed to respond and pull away.
Bagnaia, Martin and Marc Marquez were holding the top three for most of the race and it seemed the race would end in that order, followed by Enea Bastianini and Pedro Acosta.
It seemed that Bastianini, with a full tank and new tires, had a problem with speed, but “The Beast” was definitely the fastest at the end of the race. Bastianini overtook Marc Marquez in third, then caught Jorge Martin and on the last lap managed to overtake his teammate’s biggest rival for the title.
“It feels so special because I come from a difficult moment, it happened during this whole past week, “I slept a little bit during the half part of the race but when Marc overtook me I closed my mind and said that ‘no, it’s not correct. No. This is my podium“, Bastianini said.
Ducati achieved the best possible result towards their championship hunt, and Bagnaia currently sits second in the riders standings with 153 points, having closed in on Martin to 18 points behind.
“Honestly, the day started well because I received a message, a video message, from a legend (laughs) who told me “probably today you will win”. And it was incredible, so I’m very happy, satisfied, proud. This weekend was fantastic, I started the race well, yesterday was fantastic. Today it was very important to be in the lead from the first lap, to get my rhythm, and the strategy of the first lap, in the first two corners, went perfectly. It was therefore impossible to do better“, Bagnaia said.
As for the remainder of the standings at Mugello, Marc Marquez was left without a podium and ended the race in fourth place. The most successful KTM rider was Pedro Acosta who ended up fifth. Pramac rider Franco Morbidelli took sixth in his best result of the season.
VR46 rider Fabio Di Giannantonio finished the race seventh, making the most progress during the race after starting 14th. Maverick Vinales started on the first row, but couldn’t manage to translate that into a good position, finishing eighth. Rounding out the top 10 in this race was Alex Marquez (Gresini) Brad Binder (KTM).
Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaro finished the race in 11th. Trackhouse racing duo Raul Fernandez and Miguel Oliveira ended in 12th and 14th, with Marco Bezzecchi from the VR46 racing team sandwiched between them. The last point at Mugello was taken out by Alex Rins for Yamaha.
Sprint Recap: Bagnaia Domination, Disaster for Martin and Bastianini.
“Pecco” Bagnaia had a perfect weekend at Mugello also winning the Saturday sprint race. It was the first victory for the Italian driver in sprint since last years Austrian Grand Prix. Second place was taken by Marc Marquez, while Pedro Acosta took third. Enea Bastianini ended his race with an incident on lap 2 during an overtake attempt on Jorge Martin, with Matin later taking a fall on lap 7 to also end his race with a DNF.
