MotoGP Assen Race: Fabio Quartararo takes commanding victory
Fabio Quartararo takes his fourth victory of the season at Assen.
Fabio Quartararo dominated the field once again in Assen to take his fourth victory of the season extending his championship lead to 34 points over his countryman Johann Zarco. It was a scary start with Quartararo muscling his way past teammate Vinales even making contact with the Spaniard as they hurtled down to T1. Francesco Bagnaia was the rider who would escape as the race leader and would lead the opening 4 laps until Quartararo was finally able to get past the Ducati of Bagnaia, the Italian would eventually be penalised with a long lap penalty for track limits infringements, demoting him down the order to P8 after battling with Takaaki Nakagami for a podium position.
Unfortunately for both Bagnaia and Nakagami neither were able to taste the podium champagne with Bagnaia recovering up to P6 and Nakagami having an absolutely torrid lap after being overtaken by Vinales. The overtake seemed to shake him out of his rhythm on the corners which would follow, going wide, missing apexes and being overtaken by Mir, Zarco, Bagnaia, Oliveira, Marquez and Espargaro, finishing in a lowly P9 which is super disappointing for the Japanese rider given he had the pace to battle for a podium.
Another rider who was disappointed was Maverick Vinales, he had a face of thunder in parc ferme complaining about his clutch stopping him from having a good start not greeting anyone on the podium or even celebrating, this comes off the back of rumours of him cancelling his contract with Yamaha and moving to Aprilia. He knew he could’ve won today’s race but instead of taking positives from second place he chose to moan about it, surely it’s better than finishing last at Germany?
Joan Mir battled to take his second podium since Mugello this year, the 2020 champion not performing as expected but we go to tracks he is very very strong at in the second half of the season where we are sure he will be able to put in some very strong results. Bagnaia looked almost certain to take a podium today as previously mentioned before being demoted due to the long lap, there’s no doubt the Italian will be unimpressed today as he was staring down the barrel of his first-ever race win in the class.
A rider who deserves a round of applause is Marc Marquez, the GermanGP winner came from P20 on the grid to fight his way all the way to P7 which given his issues with his shoulder and his lack of confidence with the bike after his monumental FP3 high-side is a very very strong result for the 8 time champion who led Aleix Espargaro, Nakagami then Pol Espargaro.
Another rider who had a strong comeback was Alex Rins, he was pushed wide after a move from Johann Zarco and found himself way back in P22, he was able to fight his way back through to finish in P11 ahead of a KTM duo of Brad Binder and Danilo Petrucci.
Full results –
