MotoGP Portimao RACE: Quartararo wins in Portugal

April 18, 2021 EMR Writer

Fabio Quartararo capped off a great race with the win to take the title lead.

MotoGP just gets better and better race by race and Portimao was no exception to this rule, Fabio Quartararo took a dominant win but it wasn’t without a battle or a scrap to get there. At the start of the race, Quartararo was pushed down the order as the riders scrapped their way through to make up places early on, however lap by lap he made his way back up through the order, picking off his competitors one by one until it was just him and Alex Rins, Rins was pushing and giving his all to keep with Quartararo breaking lap records left right and centre, unfortunately for Rins the pressure and the pace got a little too high for the Spanish rider who found himself crashing out of second place leaving Portugal empty-handed.

Francesco Bagnaia is a surprising but impressive rider today, we all expected his teammate Jack Miller to come into the class and storm to podiums but it’s the rider on the other side of the garage who is making it count with two podiums to his name and second place in the championship, Bagnaia was understandably frustrated after losing his pole lap time yesterday but was able to channel his energy into producing a podium finish today only 15 points behind leader Quartararo, joining the duo on the box is Joan Mir who again fought his way through the pack to take a podium.

A rider who will be sleeping easy tonight is Franco Morbidelli, the Italian suffered some awful luck in both races in Doha with his holeshot device malfunctioning and his knee slider falling off, thankfully in Portugal he was able to crack on with his race taking home P4 ahead of an incredibly impressive Brad Binder who came through from P15 on the grid to P5.

Aleix Espargaro was able to match Aprilia’s best result in the class again with a P6, Aprilia have taken more P6’s than they can count now, it’s only a matter of time before they break into the top 5, a solid race for Espargaro who was battling the whole way through holding off Marc Marquez. In P7 and P8 were the Marquez brothers, Marc returning from injury and struggling during the race with muscle pain and fatigue as he is not used to racing and riding a MotoGP bike at this level so may take a few races to adapt but a P7 finish is outstanding given that he didn’t think he’d finish the race.

We saw many outstanding rides today, namely Bastianini, Nakagami and Marini who all pulled off some stunning results with Bastinaini and Nakagami in the top 10, Nakagami pulled off a miracle today finishing the race after his 200mph crash which ruined his weekend giving him major collarbone, chest and leg pain as we saw him hobbling in and out of the pits.

There were many crashers today including Johann Zarco out of P2 who was battling to keep himself in the title fight, he has been demoted to P4 overall now in the standings following the crash. Jack Miller also crashed following a really tough start to his year in the factory Ducati colours taking 2 P9 finishes in Qatar and DNF in Portimao. Valentino Rossi also crashed, no comment.

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