Bagnaia beats Martin in straight fight to win Malaysian GP after red flag

Francesco Bagnaia won the Malaysian Grand Prix after a straight fight for multiple laps with Jorge Martin. The race would also be disrupted due to a crash early on.

After another great start, Jorge Martin would draw alongside Francesco Bagnaia going into Turn 1, Bagnaia squeezing Martin to the inside, attempting to run his rival onto the tighter line. Martin would almost run over Bagnaia’s right leg as they tipped into the first corner, with Bagnaia managing to get back underneath Martin midway through the corner, a familiar sight at the first corner which is a hairpin.

Bagnaia would lead Martin through the opening corners and subsequently the first lap, as chaos ensued behind. Jack Miller, Brad Binder and Fabio Quartararo would all be involved in a brutal crash at Turn 2, with a couple of the bikes running across the inside and straight into the path of the oncoming traffic that were exiting the corner.

This incident would bring out the red flag, halting the Grand Prix for another 15 minutes or so. Quartararo would return to the Yamaha pit garage with a limp, as the race got restarted around 20 minutes later. All riders involved in the incident were conscious afterwards.

Once the race would finally get restarted, the early laps of the restart would be a straight dogfight between Francesco Bagnaia and Jorge Martin, running side-by-side down almost every single straight, attempting to outbrake one another at the first and last corners particularly. The pair duelled for multiple laps in a row, Martin the aggressor, just running slightly too deep in some corners, allowing for Bagnaia to come back underneath Martin.

After battling for so long, Bagnaia would maintain the lead as Martin fell further behind, the gap opening to one second. Martin’s tyres potentially had been running too hot, eventually the gap going over one second as Marc Marquez loomed in the background of the championship leader, a further eight tenths of a second behind.

However, at the end of Lap 7, Marc Marquez would crash at the final corner, running slightly too deep with the front end of the Gresini Ducati tucking underneath the eight-time world champion. The leaders stretched the lead to around five seconds at the front of the field, with Martin actually almost two seconds down on Bagnaia just over the halfway mark, not feeling the need to take much risk.

Alex Marquez and Pedro Acosta would scrap over fourth place in the last third of the race, the pair running a couple of seconds behind on Enea Bastianini, who ran third after the crash from Marc Marquez. The Ducati’s were dominant on the straights, and managed to get the bike stopped in the harder braking zones, whereas the KTM of Acosta was attempting to find more pace than the Ducati’s in the more technical areas of the circuit.

In the closing stages of the race, Martin had closed to Bagnaia by over half a second, pushing his Pramac Ducati harder each lap. Eventually, the championship leader would run very wide at Turn 10, losing almost an entire second to Bagnaia.

Marc Marquez managed to battle back through the field and into the points, finishing in 12th place and subsequently picking up a few points in his championship fight for third place up against Enea Bastianini.

Francesco “Pecco” Bagnaia would come home to take a dominant victory at the Sepang International Circuit, claiming the win for the Malaysian Grand Prix. Bagnaia led Jorge Martin across the line for second place, the pair of them continuing their championship battle into the final round in just a couple of weeks time.

Enea Bastianini would finish third, a crucial podium in the championship for third place against Marc Marquez, who came across the line 12th and in the points after crashing earlier on.

Fabio Quartararo would finish in sixth place after a huge accident early into the race, an exceptional result for the 2021 World Champion, who secures a strong result for Yamaha despite limping away from that accident.

The MotoGP championship battle rages on to the final round in Barcelona, with Francesco Bagnaia now 24 points behind Jorge Martin, with just one Grand Prix and one Sprint Race remaining.

MotoGP Malaysian Grand Prix – Race Results

1st Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati
2nd Jorge Martin, Prima Pramac
3rd Enea Bastianini, Ducati
4th Alex Marquez, Gresini Racing
5th Pedro Acosta, Red Bull GasGas KTM
6th Fabio Quartararo, Yamaha
7th Maverick Vinales, Aprilia
8th Alex Rins, Yamaha
9th Marco Bezzecchi, VR46 Racing
10th Augusto Fernandez, Red Bull GasGas KTM
11th Johann Zarco, LCR Honda
12th Marc Marquez, Gresini Racing
13th Aleix Espargaro, Aprilia
14th Franco Morbidelli, Prima Pramac
15th Luca Marini, Repsol Honda
16th Raul Fernandez, Trackhouse Racing
17th Andrea Iannone, VR46 Racing
18th Lorenzo Savadori, Trackhouse Racing
DNF Takaaki Nakagami, LCR Honda
DNF Joan Mir, Repsol Honda
DNF Jack Miller, Red Bull Factory KTM
DNF Brad Binder, Red Bull Factory KTM

Featured Image: Red Bull Content Pool