The Spanish Jorge Martin (Ducati Desmosedici GP24) He won the sprint race from start to finish of the Australian MotoGP Grand Prix that was held at the Phillip Island circuit and with which he increases his lead in the provisional championship standings.
Martín, who achieves his sixth victory of the season in a sprint race, increases his lead in the provisional world classification to 16 points over the Italian Francesco ‘Pecco’ Bagnaia (Ducati Desmosedici GP24), which could only be fourth.
Very good start from both Jorge Martín and Marc Marquezwhich then lost all its advantage by leaving very long in the first corner and was relegated to eighth positionwhile the world leader maintained first place, ahead of Marco Bezzecchi and Bagnaia.
Marc Márquez made a mistake in the first corner by deactivating his bike’s exit system too much, which It made him lose many positions and that literally left Jorge Martín alone at the front of the race.
Márquez – eighth at that time – wasted no time in recovering positions to surpass both Franco Morbidelli and Maverick Viñaleswho despite starting third also gave up a lot of space to his rivals.
Thus, in the second round Jorge Martín already had almost a second advantage over his immediate pursuersthe pair formed by Bezzecchi and Bagnaia, who in turn had half a second over the South African Brad Binder, who led the group that already included Marc Márquez, who in the third lap was already in fourth place in the hunt for Bagnaia, who surpassed Bezzecchi in that turn.
In the fourth lap, Jorge Martín’s advantage was already superior to the second on a quartet formed by Bagnaia, Bezzecchi, Márquez -who didn’t take long to put the wheel to the Italian- and Bastianini.
Marc Márquez tried to make an outside Marco Bezzecchi on the fifth lap but the Italian held the position very well, until on the finish line The Spaniard achieved his goal to follow in Bagnaia’s wakewhich he reached in just a few corners of the sixth of the thirteen laps for which the ‘sprint’ race was scheduled.
On that same lap, the Frenchman Johann Zarco (Honda RC 213 V) and the Spanish Alex Márquez (Ducati Desmosedici GP23) were left out of the race due to a crash and Marc Márquez was already glued to the slipstream of ‘Pecco’ Bagnaia’s motorcyclewith Jorge Martín two seconds ahead.
Márquez looked for his opportunity and He looked for the gap that would allow him to overcome Bagnaiaa goal he achieved on the eighth lap, although by then Jorge Martín’s advantage was already more than three seconds.
Bagnaia was not in his best moment because he practically On that same lap both Marc Márquez and Enea Bastianini overtook himgoing from second to fourth place.
Far from giving ground, Jorge Martín knew how to maintain and even increase the advantage by a tenth of a second that he had over Marc Márquez on the way to victory in the first ‘sprint’ race in Australia, since in 2023 the bad atmospheric conditions prevented it from being held.
But Marc Márquez persevered and three laps from the end he reduced the differences with a few tenths of a second. a Jorge Martín who was controlling perfectly your advantage ‘calculator’ in hand.
By then, the race had already lost two of its protagonists, the Australian Jack Miller (KTM RC 16) and the Spanish Pedro Acosta (Gas Gas RC 16) and in the rush of braking in turn one, at the beginning of the eleventh lap, Marco Bezzecchi miscalculated the braking and hit a Maverick Viñales from behind who had just overtaken him.
Like them, shortly after, the South African Brad Binder (KTM RC 16) also ended up on the ground.
Jorge Martín knew manage your advantage very well to win the sprint racefollowed by Marc Márquez and Enea Bastianini, who took the first podium at Phillip Island, with double world champion ‘Pecco’ Bagnaia in fourth place.
