Marc Marquez sees off early challenge for dominant win

Marc Marquez secured a superb Italian Grand Prix win after defeating MotoGP title rivals Francesco Bagnaia and Alex Marquez in a close fight over the opening stages of the race.

After the lights went out, Marquez got a much better start than in the sprint race and was level with Bagnaia heading into the first corner, but Bagnaia wasn’t going to concede so easily in front of his home crowd and immediately attacked into Turn 2.

From then on Bagnaia and both the Marquez brothers battle it out during the opening laps of the race, with a series of moves into the first corner as well as into the Turn 2 and Turn 3 complex. There were numerous changes for the lead as Bagnaia showed his aggressive streak, which culminated in contact between the Bagnaia and Marc Marquez at Turn 5, the front tyre of Bagnaia’s Ducati striking Marc’s identical factory machine.

However, it was clear Bagnaia was struggling with the front end of this bike, the issue that has plagued him for the majority of this season – while he lost out to Alex Marquez during the contact after the younger Marquez brother took advantage of the speed difference.

Alex was on a charge and managed to get the better of his older brother, however the status quo was reversed on lap nine with Marc taking back the lead. From then on, Marc pulled out a safe lead to take his fifth grand prix win of the season.

Marc’s brother meanwhile focused on keeping Bagnaia at bay, just like at Aragon, which he duly did to take second.

But Bagnaia was in trouble and just didn’t have the pace to hang on to the podium, with Fabio Di Giannantonio sneaking through with two laps to go.

Early on, Tech3’s Maverick Vinales managed to snatch fourth place on lap nine from Franco Morbidelli but contact between the two coming at Turn 4 resulted in the KTM rider going down. Morbidelli would get a long lap penalty for his trouble but strayed beyond the white lines when serving it so was forced to take it twice.

Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi took fifth after again showing strong race pace, with Morbidelli able to recover to sixth after his penalty gaff, while Raul Fernandez brought home a decent result for the Trackhouse Aprilia team in seventh.

The KTM duo of Pedro Acosta and Brad Binder finished the race in eighth and ninth after a close duel in the closing stages. They both went for the hard front tyre, hoping it would give them additional confidence under braking. It didn’t really work out and when combined with the factory team’s double DNF from the sprint, it was a pretty average result after the highs of Friday’s practice.

Ai Ogura rounded out the top 10, a great finish considering it was his first race back after his Silverstone practice injury.

The DNFs included Enea Bastianini and Johann Zarco who both went down early on as well as Jack Miller who abandoned his Yamaha after clutch problems.

MotoGP Italian GP – race results