MotoGP | Bastianini overtakes Bagnaia and wins the Aragon GP; Quartararo falls and doesn’t score

Enea Bastianini, a Gresini Racing MotoGP rider in MotoGP, won the Aragon GP this Sunday after a last-lap overtake over his future teammate and this year’s title contender Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati Lenovo Team).

Bagnaia started well, led practically the entire race, but was unable to open up much of an advantage over the other riders. Bastianini, on the contrary, showed much more performance, and was glued to the Ducati rider from start to finish.

Halfway through the race, he even managed to overtake, but a little further on, he made a mistake and returned to second place. Little by little, he managed to get closer again and, when everyone believed that he would not attack the official Ducati rider, as he is fighting for the title and the fact that Fabio Quartararo (Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP) was involved in an accident at the start of the race and was out of the race, he performed the overtake to victory on the last lap.

The championship leader remains Quartararo, but he has seen his lead reduced to just 10 points for Bagnaia and 17 points for Aleix Espargaro (Aprilia Racing). If Bagnaia had won, the difference would have been only 5 points.

Quartararo had to retire after being involved in an accident on the first lap with Marc Marquez (Repsol Honda Team), who was returning from surgery. The Honda rider started from 13th position, managed to overtake several riders at the beginning, including Quartararo, but at turn 3, he lost some traction on the rear wheel, slipped slightly and had to take his hand off the throttle a little bit. Quartararo was to close, and had no reaction time. He hit Marquez squarely in the rear and was practically ‘ejected’ from the bike. Marquez continued, but something broke on his bike and, a few corners ahead, he suffered another collision, this time from Takaaki Nakagami (LCR Honda Idemitsu). The japanese also went to the ground and stayed in the middle of the track, almost being run over by the other riders, who had to swerve. Until the closing of this article, the information we have is that the pilots involved in the two accidents did not suffer serious injuries, only scratches or something similar.

With the victory, Bastianini consolidated his fourth position in the championship and, at least mathematically, is still in contention for the title. Bagnaia, on the other hand, let slip his fifth victory in a row, a historic fact for the Italian brand, and the possibility of getting even closer to Quartararo.

Aleix Espargaro also benefited from Quartararo’s non-score, and from his great performance at MotorLand Aragon, as he fought hard for fourth place throughout the race and, in the end, got third place on the podium, overtaking Brad Binder (Red Bull KTM Factory Racing).

Anyway, the race was quite hectic, at least at the beginning, and at the end, we could see Bastianini’s victorious overtake, when everyone believed that Ducati would have ordered it not to happen.

Now the MotoGP circus packs its bags and leaves for Asia. Next stop: Japanese GP.

See the Championship standings after the race in Aragon:

MotoGP returns on September 25th with the Japanese GP at the Motegi circuit.

source