Francesco Bagnaia has won the Italian Motorcycle Grand Prix for a third successive year, Ducati’s reigning MotoGP world champion dominating round seven of the season at Mugello to slash his world championship deficit to Jorge Martin to 18 points.
Bagnaia, who won Saturday’s 11-lap sprint race from second on the grid, came into Sunday’s Grand Prix carrying a three-place grid penalty for impeding Ducati’s Alex Marquez in practice, but made light of starting from fifth on the grid to surge to the lead just two corners into Sunday’s 23-lap race, and was never challenged on his way to victory by 0.799 seconds.
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Bagnaia’s factory Ducati teammate Enea Bastianini produced a brilliant final two laps to vault to second place, passing six-time MotoGP world champion Marc Marquez for third with two laps remaining before overtaking Martin with a dramatic dive down the inside of the final corner, beating the Spaniard across the line by 0.125secs.
It was a largely processional race at Mugello before Bastianini’s late fireworks, Bagnaia never leading Martin by more than one second, but never challenged by the Pramac Ducati rider, who had crashed out of the sprint race 24 hours earlier.
Martin closed to within 0.3secs with three laps left, but Bagnaia immediately responded on lap 22 to build his margin back to eight-tenths of a second, Martin then having to defend from Bastianini rather than challenge for victory on the final lap.
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“It wasn’t easy starting from P5, but then I had this strategy to go in [to the first corner] from the outside and it went perfectly,” Bagnaia said.
“Then I started to push, and it wasn’t easy to manage the rear tyre because it was pushing a lot the front [tyre]. But a win today, after a weekend like this, is fantastic.”
Australia’s Jack Miller failed to score points for the fourth straight Grand Prix, the KTM rider finishing in 16th place.
Miller, who KTM announced is being replaced by star Spanish rookie Pedro Acosta for the 2025 season on Saturday, started from 19th, his worst qualifying performance in seven years.
The 29-year-old stormed forward on the first lap to 13th but steadily dropped back thereafter, finishing 28.417secs behind Bagnaia and 4.8secs behind the final points-finisher, Yamaha’s Alex Rins in 15th.
Acosta, who finished third in Saturday’s sprint, was fifth in the Grand Prix, 20secs clear of Miller.
Martin leads the championship standings with 171 points, 18 clear of Bagnaia, with Marc Marquez falling to 35 points behind Martin in third after his run of three consecutive podium finishes was snapped with fourth place.
With the inaugural Kazakhstan Grand Prix postponed from June 16 to September 22, MotoGP takes a four-week break before the next race, the Dutch TT at Assen on June 30.
Source Agencies
