Those expecting a great duel between Pecco Bagnaia and Jorge Martin will have been disappointed, but it is right to give credit to Alex Marquez for the beautiful victory he took home in the Sprint of the Malaysian Grand Prix. His second of the season in a short Saturday race after the one at Silverstone.
All eyes were on the two title contenders, who started paired on the front row, but today the Gresini Racing Spaniard made it clear from the very early stages that he had an edge and certainly less to lose than his rivals.
For the first half of the race it was poleman Bagnaia who dictated the pace, also favored by the battle between Marquez and Martin behind him, which had also allowed him to open the gap to about half a second ahead at a certain point.
After having come back, during the sixth of the ten scheduled laps, the driver from Cervera found the right gap to overtake the reigning world champion, who at that juncture seemed to be in obvious difficulty and also gave up his place. honor to Martin a few corners later.
As if that wasn’t enough, in the following lap Pecco also found himself with something stuck to the fairing of his Ducati, probably some paint that had come off the curb, although it shouldn’t have damaged him too much, given that a couple of laps more late he flew away. Or at least the Piedmontese seemed to have a lack of pace regardless of this.
While the first two took off in front of him, with Alex Marquez thus interrupting Martin’s streak of five consecutive Sprint victories, Bagnaia was lucky enough to find teammate Enea Bastianini behind him, who with fourth place he achieved his best result of the season after starting from the front row, despite perfectly dressing the role of the squire of his team leader who had helped him this morning by taking him to “school” in FP2. In the World Championship, therefore, Pecco’s lead over “Martinator” is now reduced to 11 points.
Behind the Ducati poker were the two KTMs of Brad Binder and Jack Miller, who were the only bikes capable of interspersing the Red Army, given that between the seventh and ninth places which conclude the points zone there were only of the Desmosedici GP with Marco Bezzecchi, Johann Zarco and Luca Marini in order.
Aprilia therefore remains empty, with Maverick Vinales unable to do better than 10th place and his teammate Aleix Espargaro who instead finished 12th. The best of the Japanese bikes slipped between them, which was Franco Morbidelli’s Yamaha, which tried to recover from the sixth row. Despite starting from the third row, his teammate Fabio Quartararo instead experienced a disappointing Sprint and finished only 16th.
Marc Marquez also did poorly, having climbed up to 12th position from 20th on the grid in the early stages, but then slipped and resumed his run at the rear of the group, finishing 21st. So far it certainly hasn’t gone as the wild card of Alvaro Bautista would have hoped, because the Superbike world champion finished 22nd with a gap of more than half a minute.
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