Francesco Bagnaia reacts like a champion to yesterday’s defeat and wins the 2024 Catalan Grand Prix, sixth round of the MotoGP World Championship of the season. 21st success in the top class (31st overall in the MotoGP) and third success of the year for Pecco, who therefore at least partially makes up for the heavy zero of the Sprint, remaining in the running for the world championship hat-trick and dispelling the curse of Montmelò (he had never done better than 5th in the race).
This time the Piedmontese from the Ducati Factory was impeccable from the first to the last corner, managing the tires intelligently and coming out at a distance to then make the difference on the Spaniard Jorge Martin in the second half of the race. However, Martinator had the clarity not to overdo it in his attempt to respond to Bagnaia, settling for a very precious second place for the championship.
All-Ducati podium completed in third position by the Iberian champion Marc Marquez, who made another exceptional comeback from 14th place on the grid, gradually moving up the group and almost beating the Aprilia of the Catalan host (pole-man and winner of the Sprint Race) Aleix Espargarò on the weekend in which he announced his retirement . 5th the Roman Fabio Di Giannantonio with the Ducati GP23 of the VR46 team, his teammate Marco Bezzecchi in difficulty.
Finally, it is worth mentioning Franco Morbidelli’s retirement (slipped with 7 laps to go), la fall of Pedro Acosta while he was fighting at least for the podium (he was then able to restart by entering the points zone with 13th place) and the disastrous race by Enea Bastianininever in contention for the top positions and relegated out of the points zone with a ride through at the end of the GP for not having served a long lap penalty.
Martin, with today’s second place at Montmelò, remains the leader of the World Championship with a margin of 39 points over Bagnaia, 41 over Marquez, 61 over Bastianini, 68 over Viñales, 72 over Acosta, 79 over Aleix Espargarò and 80 over Binderwhile Di Giannantonio and Bezzecchi are 9th and 10th respectively.
