‘Pecco’ Bagnaia has come up with a tough competitor for the MotoGP world championship. A spectacular Jorge Martín presented his candidacy to fight the Italian for the championship, winning the sprint race on Saturday and taking an impressive race this Sunday by 64 thousandths. The Madrid rider closes the gap with the world championship leader, who is still Bagnania, to 16 points.
The cross was again for Marc Márquez, who after suffering his fifth fall of the weekend during the morning warm-up, decided to retire due to his bruises: “I don’t feel ready. I have many blows to the body, ”he lamented.
Jorge Martín, just as he did yesterday in the sprint race, shone at Sachsenring with a masterful start in which he climbed from sixth place to take the lead in just two laps. He dropped two positions in the first few meters and emulating his double pass on Saturday, he quickly moved into second around the same corner. A point that would be keyed again a lap later when he would attack Bagnaia to overtake the Italian driver to take the lead.
He was in first position for most of the race, but Bagnaia would not give up and both drivers staged a beautiful battle in the last few laps. With 9 laps to go, the Italian would manage to overtake Martín, but the man from Madrid, very confident in his chances, would recover the first position three laps later, giving him back the overtaking at the same point where Pecco had passed him minutes before.
The San Sebastián de los Reyes defended tooth and nail in the last few laps, Bagnaia even touched Martín’s bike in the final meters, but the Spaniard would be faster, 64 thousandths faster, to sign one of the most impressive victories of his career. The driver from Madrid, who had already won the sprint race with authority on Saturday, now adds his fourth consecutive podium finish, his sixth this season.
Marc Márquez continues in free fall. The Catalan driver announced minutes before the start of the race that he would not race at Sachsenring due to bruises suffered in a fall during the warm-up on Sunday morning. The fifth fall of the weekend for the Honda rider, who left the track limping and, although the doctor gave him the ‘ok’ to compete, he made the decision to retire.
“I don’t feel ready. I have a lot of blows to my body and I’m not ready,” he confirmed on the Dazn microphones after Honda confirmed the pilot’s withdrawal. The medical part speaks of “a strong contusion in the right ankle and a distension in it”, in addition to “a small fracture in the proximal area that affects the most distal phalanx” of his left hand. Although the man from Cervera confirmed that he would be in Assen, for the next Dutch Grand Prix (June 25).
Márquez was left without competing in a circuit in which he has won eleven times and adds one more to the long list of problems with his Honda, which he already lamented last week in Mugello, where he also crashed: “ At the slightest mistake the bike betrays you and you fall”, he stated.
In Moto2 the victory went to the Spanish pilot Pedro Acosta. The man from Mazarrón, who started from pole position, gave up first place to Tony Arbolino on the first lap, but recovered his position on the second lap around the Sachsenring circuit and would not give it up again throughout the race. Jake Dixon pushed to the end to try to wrest second place from Arbolino, but failed and ended up behind the Italian.
It is the fourth victory of the season for Acosta, who closes the gap on the world leader, the Italian Tony Arbolino (Kalex). Arbolino now has 139 points, compared to Pedro Acosta’s 124 and already with the third classified, the Spanish Alonso López (Boscoscuro), who was fifth at Sachsenring, with 82.
Earlier, the Turkish Deniz Öncü (KTM) signed the first victory of his racing career in Moto3 after beating the Japanese Ayumu Sasaki in a heart-stopping last lap. The leader of the world championship, Daniel Holgado (KTM) finished in third position, ahead of Iván Ortolá, but with this he increased his lead in the provisional world championship to 41 points over the also Spanish Jaume Masiá (Honda), who was sixth .
