Francesco Bagnaia dominated the Spanish Grand Prix to record his first MotoGP success of 2022 ahead of series leader Fabio Quartararo.
Despite getting a marginally slower start than the Yamaha racer, Bagnaia managed to hang onto the leadership across the opening corners – though Quartararo mounted pressure on the Italian across the opening tours.
The reigning premier class world champion started to drop off as the contest reached a thirds-distance however, Bagnaia opening up around an eight-tenth-of-a-second lead as he continued to look after the rubber on his Ducati.
Quartararo tried to mount a charge across the closing stanza of the encounter as he closed to within half-a-second of the Desmosedici, though he ultimately never got close enough to seriously challenge Baganaia and was eventually forced to settle for second as the 2021 MotoGP vice champion took the chequered flag 0.285s clear after leading every lap to score his first win of the year.
Behind the leading duo – to the tune of around nine seconds – a frenetic dice for the final rostrum was underway, with the sister factory Ducati of Jack Miller holding the position for the bulk of the race under sustained pressure from Honda’s Marc Marquez and Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaro.
Marquez stalked Miller throughout the entire distance, remaining glued onto the Aussie’s rear wheel before finally diving around the outside at Turn 6 with only a few circulations remaining.
Espargaro soon followed through to fourth as he moved past Miller at the final bend, a pass that would ultimately gift him third as Marquez lost the front of his RC213-V and ran wide, dropping back to fifth as a result but lucky to not crash out.
The Aprilia pilot went on to pull away over the remaining couple of tours to secure his second-straight podium finish – his third of the campaign – while Marquez ended up getting the better of Miller on the final lap to grab fourth.
Suzuki’s Joan Mir managed to catch the tussling group ahead in the final laps, though couldn’t mount an attack and had to settle for sixth ahead of LCR Honda’s Takaaki Nakagami.
Enea Bastianini passed VR46 rookie Marco Bezzecchi for eighth late on, while KTM’s Brad Binder completed the top ten ahead of the other factory Honda of Pol Espargaro.
Maverick Vinales recovered to take the final point of 15th after dropping to 21st on the opening lap, while Alex Rins dropped from the joint series lead after running into the gravel mid-race – the Spaniard eventually crossing the line a disappointing 19th.
Jorge Martin’s rotten year failed to improve as he crashed once again en-route to 22nd, while team-mate Johann Zarco secured Pramac’s disastrous Spanish Sunday by crashing from ninth at Turn 5 just prior to mid-distance.
Quartararo’s points lead now stands at seven over Aleix heading to his home event at Le Mans in France in two weeks time, with Rins having now dropped to fourth but level on points with third-placed Bastianini.
Keyword: Bagnaia defeats Quartararo to score first win of 2022 at Jerez, Rins 19th