MotoGP Misano Race: Francesco Bagnaia doubles up at home

Francesco Bagnaia doubled up his MotoGP victory tally in Misano.

Francesco Bagnaia has returned to the top of the podium in Misano with victory at the track he took his first podium last year before battling for victory the following week with a crash stopping him from winning his first race, fast forward to a year later and Francesco Bagnaia evaded all issues which were thrown at him to take victory at his home track in San Marino.

It was Bagnaia’s race to lose today after taking pole position on the Saturday with a new lap record, he knew he was fast here and had the pace to fight to win today and that’s exactly what he did right from the race start. As soon as the lights went out he checked out finishing lap one with a huge one-second lead from a standing start with teammate Jack Miller in tow and Fabio Quartararo rounding out the podium positions.

This is how it would stay for a decent number of laps with the real battle going on behind them as MotoGP rookie Enea Bastianini was gaining places lap by lap with some absolutely disgusting pace on the front runners getting past Aleix Espargaro, Joan Mir, Alex Rins and Marc Marquez with ease arriving in P4 with pace for even more as he eyed up his first-ever podium finish in the MotoGP class despite being on outdated Ducati machinery riding the two-year-old GP19, Fabio Quartararo was the rider ahead of him.

Fabio wouldn’t remain in third for too long however getting past Jack Miller with 14 laps to go, Fabio clearly had superior pace to the Ducati’s and soon began eating into the three-second lead of Francesco Bagnaia up the road, the race leaders tyres starting to go away from him yet again as we’ve seen many times this year. Whilst this was going on Bastinaini had his sights set on Jack Miller and within five laps of Fabio overtaking Miller the 2020 Moto2 Champion would also get past Miller, demoting him to fourth and sending him back to the clutches of Marc Marquez and Joan Mir.

From then on all Bastianini had to do was finish the race, taking his bike home to a superb third-place finish and his first-ever MotoGP podium. It was a brilliant ride from the rookie and we are absolutely sure this won’t be the last we see of him in the podium.

Anyway, back to the race in hand, Fabio Quartararo was now gaining hugely on Bagnaia and was within earshot of ‘Pecco’ with only two laps to go, from here Quartararo actually did the smart thing and did not try and overtake Bagnaia and instead sat in second banking a strong 20 championship points to come one step closer to being the 2021 MotoGP World Champion handing Bagnaia his second MotoGP victory!

In fourth place we saw Marc Marquez take home 13 points after a race-long battle with Joan Mir, he really didn’t believe he would do well here in Misano but has proven his own doubts wrong with this podium, really strong race from the eight-time champion who benefitted from a last-lap lunge from Mir onto Miller with the pair finishing in P5 and P6, Miller the fifth-placed man.

The Espargaro’s had a strong race in P7 and P8, Aleix running in P4 at one point but was unable to hold it eventually taking P8 which I am sure he won’t be too unhappy with, they led Brad Binder and Takaaki Nakagami.

Full results – 

Featured image – Ducati