Qatar MotoGP: Fabio Di Giannantonio wins as Jorge Martin suffers a shocking race
Fabio Di Giannantonio wins the Qatar MotoGP as Jorge Martin suffers a disastrous race and he loses huge points to Francesco Bagnaia.
Unlike the sprint, Martin made a shocking start as he dropped to ninth place, while title rival Francesco Bagnaia went from fourth to first.
Martin recovered a position but then quickly came under pressure from Maverick Vinales.
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There was another close moment between Brad Binder and Marc Marquez, as the KTM rider aggressively came through on lap two.
A mistake from team-mate Johann Zarco then allowed Martin to come through for seventh position on lap three.
Using Ducati’s incredible top speed to his advantage, Martin then took sixth away from Marc Marquez while Bagnaia continued to lead ahead of Fabio Di Giannantonio.
Alex Marquez quickly followed his team-mate through on Marini which allowed Binder to come through, before the KTM man made that third with an overtake on Marquez.
As the race went on, Martin started losing more and more time to the five riders ahead of him.
A 1.3 second gap grew to over two seconds by the end of lap nine, while pressure from Vinales behind was mounting.
With the writing on the wall, lap 11 was the beginning of the end to Martin’s hopes of a good result.
Vinales came through on Martin before M. Marquez did the same just a few corners later.
It went from bad to worse for Martin as he was demoted to ninth after Fabio Quartararo and Jack Miller came through in quick succession.
At the front, the lead group was down to two as Bagnaia was unable to break clear of Di Giannantonio.
With four laps to go Di Giannantonio finally made his move for the lead before a respons looked to be coming.
Bagnaia tried to respond in turn one but nearly ran into the Gresini rider which resulted in the reigning world champion running off the track.
A two second gap was then created as Di Giannantonio went on to secure a comfortable win ahead of Bagnaia and Marini.
