MotoGP Aragon Race: Francesco Bagnaia takes maiden victory

Francesco Bagnaia became the eighth different victor in 2021 at Aragon.

Francesco Bagnaia has finally won a Grand Prix, doing so in complete style holding off eight-time champion Marc Marquez who was going hell for leather to try and overtake and take his second victory of the season applying huge amounts of pressure onto the Italian rider throughout the race from lap one.

The race started as you’d expect with plenty of jostling for position throughout the grid with Francesco Bagnaia and Marc Marquez instantly breaking away and getting into the lead with Jack Miller hot on their tails, for Miller unfortunately he wasn’t able to match the blistering pace of the two front runners and was forced to settle into a race of his own in a pretty lonely third place whilst Marquez let Bagnaia lead the race, consistently staying within 0.5 seconds of the Ducati man.

For Miller he was unable to remain in third after a last corner mistake demoted him down the order handing third place to Silverstone podium finisher Aleix Espargaro who couldn’t believe his luck, that was until Joan Mir came along and stole his thunder, stealing third place from the Aprilia man and disappearing off up the road ending the race more than five seconds ahead of Espargaro with Miller in fifth place.

The battle at the front wasn’t the only dramatics we were treated to with Fabio Quartararo, Enea Bastianini and Takaaki Nakagami all going for it in a battle for P9 with some pretty brutal moves from the 2020 Moto2 World Champion Enea Bastianini who put his 2019 Ducati to good use against the far superior M1 and RC213V, Enea held his own eventually fending off both riders to finish in a pretty astonishing sixth place getting past Brad Binder who was further up the road.

Whilst this was going on, the scrap at the front was heating up with Marquez finally making a move with 5 laps to go at turn five, he wasn’t able to make it stick unfortunately and went wide treating it as a dress rehearsal for later on, from there Bagnaia knew Marquez was coming and that Marquez wanted to win. We all know what happened at Silverstone with Marquez crashing into Jorge Martin and ending his race early, both Pecco and Marquez had this in mind and did their best to remain clean and ensure that their overtakes weren’t too risky, Bagnaia’s career previous to this has handed him a reputation of being a clean rider and it showed, allowing Marquez adequate space after an overtake making sure to make his moves stick.

Eventually after trading positions multiple times a lap throughout the race, Marquez would go for a move at turn 12 and go completely wide, Francesco Bagnaia’s superior braking ability meant Marquez had to brake extremely late to make an overtake, this would send Marquez wide and hand victory to Bagnaia after an onslaught from Marquez, Bagnaia proved the hype around him was worthy and deservedly took Ducati’s first victory at Aragon since Casey Stoner in 2010.

Full results – 

Featured image – Ducati