MotoGP Styria RACE: Jorge Martin takes rookie MotoGP victory

Jorge Martin made history today taking his debut MotoGP victory as a rookie.

Jorge Martin is a MotoGP race winner, sounds weird to say, doesn’t it? The young Spanish rider has won just his sixth MotoGP race after missing four races due to a catastrophic injury breaking his hand and ankle, he returned in Catalunya a little bit early struggling his way through three MotoGP rounds before the summer break allowed him five weeks to relax and recuperate, returning in Styria to take pole and his first victory, not forgetting this is the first victory for the Pramac Ducati team.

The race started with some drama as we have come to expect with Marquez pushing Aleix Espargaro wide out of turn one with Aleix demonstrating his anger to Marquez after the red flag of the race, Marc started the first part of the race incredibly aggressively making his way past riders to get as high as fourth place, this unfortunately didn’t go to plan with the race being red-flagged following a scary incident which saw Pedrosa crash and Savadori smash into his bike, exploding the fuel tank erupting into flames writing off both bikes in the process. Thankfully both Pedrosa and Savadori were ‘OK’ with Savadori breaking his ankle.

When the race was finally lined up to restart we had even more drama with Maverick Vinales stalling his bike on the grid, being forced to start from pit lane before copping a long lap penalty mid-race, finishing the race in dead last pulling into the pits instead of crossing the line at the end, more woes for the 2013 Moto3 World Champion who cannot seem to catch a break this year, his results going up and down like a roller coaster, last to the podium in Assen to last again here.

Going into the race restart Marquez once again sent Aleix Espargaro back to his home in Andorra, only difference is this time is that it completely wasn’t Marc’s fault, he was pushed wide following a lunge from Fabio Quartararo next to him, up ahead Jorge Martin and Joan Mir sped off behind the leader Jack Miller who was able to open up a gap to the rest of the field with Martin behind Mir. As the race continued on Mir and Martin were able to deal with Miller and send him back into the clutches of Fabio Quartararo as Martin took the race lead, never relinquishing this taking the chequered flag as the race winner as a rookie with a stunning ride ahead of Joan Mir.

Fabio Quartararo had a very strong race, he held off Jack Miller throughout the race despite Miller looking incredibly strong, eventually forcing Miller into a devastating crash sending the 13 championship points he would’ve scored up the road with his Ducati.

It’s hard to pick a rider of the race, there were so many incredibly impressive rides but Brad Binder surely is one, Binder ended lap one way down the order in P17 making his way through the field picking riders off one by one including Takaaki Nakagami and Johann Zarco on the last lap to finish in a superb P4, if he could keep up this kind of pace and not drop down the order at the start there’s no doubt he’d be battling for wins consistently, he led Takaaki Nakagami then Johann Zarco who will surely be hurting inside a little seeing his teammate take a win before he has.

Alex Rins took his best result since Qatar this year following a huge amount of crashes and upsets during his races, he finished ahead of the Marquez brothers with Marc leading Alex, Marc was as low as P14 early on into the race and had to do what he does best and work his way through the pack to finish in P8, not an awful result for the champion but you know he is expecting more.

The returning Dani Pedrosa took a stunning P10 finish, it’s genuinely unbelievable to think that he hasn’t raced in 1000 days as he looked completely natural, it just shows that class is permanent.

Full Results –