-Leads from start to end
-Sprint king Jorge Martin finishes second
-Maverick Vinales crosses the line in third
After a three week break, the 2024 MotoGP World Championship resumed and the Dutch GP Sprint turned out to be the kind of race that the reigning World Champion Pecco Bagnaia hoped for. The Ducati Lenovo Team rider needed to win the Sprint, which usually isn’t his forte but he did do so in style.
Perfect Pecco
Pecco Bagnaia showed the MotoGP field that he means business when he set a blisteringly quick lap during qualifying to secure Pole. As the lights went out, he made the perfect start and ensured he stayed ahead of chief rival and 2024 World Championship leader Jorge Martin. What followed was lap after lap of consistently quick lap times around the super fast TT Circuit Assen. There were a few instances where Martin looked threatening but Pecco always had an answer, stretching his lead to over a second in the closing stages of the race. He now sits 15 points away from Martin in the Championship.
Martinator denied a win
Jorge Martin has always been the king of MotoGP Sprint races, ever since the format was introduced. His raw pace on the Ducati GP bike has been phenomenal. However, he had no answer to Pecoo’s pace during the race. The Martinator, as he is fondly called, had to settle for second and he is looking forward to making up lost ground and challenging Pecco during Sunday’s race.
Marvellous Maverick
Aprilia Racing’s Maverick Vinales was the only other rider to stay close to the Ducatis of Pecco and Martin during the race. The Spaniard had a poor start as Alex Marquez, on the Gresini Ducati, got ahead of him in the initial part of the race. In the time that Maverick took to pass him and rise to P3, Martin and Pecco had checked out.
While the Aprilia RS-GP is a fast machine, Maverick admitted that he was very close to the limit on his bike and had no way of catching up with the Ducati duo in the front. Nevertheless, Vinales was happy to put the Aprilia on the podium and is hoping for similar fortunes during the main race today that begins at 5:30pm IST.
