MotoGP Doha RACE: Fabio Quartararo takes his first win of the season
Fabio Quartararo takes a dramatic victory in MotoGP as records are broken.
It was an incredible weekend of racing with dramatic results across all three classes but Fabio Quartarararararo’s resurgence today was unbelievably impressive, the young French rider coming through the pack from P9 on lap 4 to overtake big names such as Joan Mir, Miguel Oliveira, Jack Miller, Alex Rins and more to take the win. It was like he had an extra 10 horsepower. He had to fight for the win though as every time he got past a Ducati they would fight back on the straights so for Fabio to really make it stick he knew he had to overtake Jorge Martin in the early part of the lap and put a gap between himself and the Pramac machines if he had any chance of surviving the straights, he achieved this on lap 19 and did not lose the victory after this point putting 1.4 seconds between himself and compatriot Zarco in P2.
This 1.4 gap is a huge piece of information given than a major record was broken today, we had the closest premier class top 10 finish in the history of the sport with the top 10 being separated by just 5.382 seconds, beating the previous record by 3 seconds, thus proving that MotoGP is the most competitive the sport has ever been, ever. So for a rookie to stand on the podium in just his second race really does bode well for Jorge Martin.
The Pramac duo of Johann Zarco and Jorge Martin had a little duel in the final lap of the race with Martin being wise beyond his years, he knows Zarco has a job to do in fighting for the championship so taking points from his teammate when he was on the podium already was pointless (haha you get my pun?), it was a phenomenal showing of racecraft from Martin to make this decision and Pramac should be proud of their riders as Zarco now leads the MotoGP Championship standings.
In Fourth place finished Alex Rins, the Spanish rider finally getting one over his teammate after he was forced to watch Mir do what he should’ve done last year and win the title, Rins was a strong competitor all race long but sadly Suzuki’s top speed on the straights is no match for the Ducati’s, however, he was able to hold off Maverick Vinales and Francesco Bagnaia. Vinales was last weeks race winner but was not happy at all when he was in his pit box, likely struggling in the latter parts of the race.
Joan Mir, this is an interesting one, he and Jack Miller had a scrap on track with Mir putting in a risky move on Miller partway through the race, unfortunately although the move could’ve caused the two to crash, there is no excuse for Miller to see red (haha and again, on a roll here) and purposely smash into Mir at the last corner, staring directly at Mir as he clattered into the champion showing clear content. How race direction decided that this was a racing incident we do not know…
Anyway moving on from this controversial subject, it was a solid race for Brad Binder in P8, the KTM has struggled hugely in Qatar so a P8 is a great result for the South African rider after we saw Miguel Oliveira fly down to turn one at the start similarly to how Jorge Martin did last week picking up a handful of places, unfortunately for Oliveira he struggled in the race and finished in P15, he will be looking forward to his home race at Portimao in 2 weeks time where he will battle for the win once again.
Petronas SRT had another weekend to forget with Morbidelli in P12 and Rossi in P16, we could be wrong and will have to verify but it looked like Morbidelli was missing a knee slider.
Full results:
