Ducati couldn’t have asked for anything better at the Mugello weekend. On the Sunday in which she decided to celebrate the Italian national teams with a light blue livery, it was our own drivers who gave her a stunning 1-2, with Pecco Bagnaia giving himself the third consecutive success in the Italian Grand Prix, preceding a vigorous Enea Bastianini in the last two laps, in which he literally “stripped” the Spanish tandem formed by Jorge Martin and Marc Marquez.
Bagnaia needed a perfect weekend in Tuscany to relaunch his candidacy for the triple world championship and even today it took him a few hundred meters to cancel the much-discussed three-place grid penalty that had been given to him on Friday for an alleged impediment to damage by Alex Marquez. Starting from fifth place, he immediately moved into second position at San Donato, but at Luco he forced himself inside Martin, immediately taking command of the operations.
At that point he tried to give an infernal pace to the race, constantly lapping at a pace between 1’45” high and 1’46” low, always maintaining a margin buffer against Martin, but also the composed tandem from Bastianini and Marquez, who followed in third and fourth place. For a good part of the race, the positions remained unchanged, at least until 6 laps to go, when Marquez managed to find the gap to overtake Bastianini at San Donato.
Bagnaia seemed to be in total control, but with three laps to go he made a mistake, which allowed Martin to come back, reaching just three tenths of a second. His reaction, however, was vehement, because on the penultimate lap he signed a 1’46″3 which definitively closed the games, giving him his fourth victory of the season, the 22nd of his career in MotoGP.
But this is where Bastianini finally came into action in his “Beast” version: first on the penultimate lap he forced himself inside Marquez at Scarperia, taking third position. Then, in the final lap, he stuck to Martin’s tail, leading him to a small mistake which however he paid dearly for. “Martinator” went slightly wide at Bucine, leaving a gap that Enea exploited to steal second place from him and allow Bagnaia to gain 4 more points on the Spaniard, returning to -18. In fact, his gap has more than halved compared to Barcelona.
After six consecutive podiums, therefore, Marc Marquez’s streak comes to an end, and this time he has to settle for fourth place, seeing his gap in the standings rise to 35 points. However, there is a small rapprochement for Bastianini, who is now at -57 and just at the moment in which the choice for the future of the official team seemed reserved for the two Spaniards, he sends an important signal.
After trying to keep the pace of the Ducatis in the first part of the race, Pedro Acosta slowly pulled away, finishing fifth with his GasGas Tech3, but edging out more than eight seconds to the closest of the other KTMs, which is that of Brad Binder in tenth position.
Strengthened by yesterday’s fourth place, Franco Morbidelli also had an excellent sign of rediscovered competitiveness, remaining among the best for half the race and then finishing sixth with his Ducati, just ahead of the GP23 of Fabio Di Giannantonio, author of a beautiful comeback which took him from 14th place on the grid to finishing seventh. The Roman is also experiencing a positive moment, especially if you consider that his teammate Marco Bezzecchi only finished 13th after a colorless test.
In eighth position is the first of the Aprilias with Maverick Vinales. The Spaniard was the only one to mount the medium tire on his RS-GP and his choice does not seem to have paid off, because he lost positions in the early stages and then was never able to regain them. It still fared better than its brand mates, as Aleix Espargaro, Raul Fernandez and Miguel Oliveira all remained outside the top 10.
Alex Rins’ second time on Friday, however, had only been an illusion for Yamaha, which today returned to deal with its harsh reality: the Spaniard took a small point with 15th place, while Fabio Quartararo he even found himself in 18th position, but still ahead of the two Hondas of Johann Zarco and Luca Marini, who were the only RC213Vs at the finish line. The Aprilia of wild card Lorenzo Savadori closes the group.
#MotoGP #Mugello #Azzurro #BagnaiaBastianini #double
