Ducati’s Alex Marquez won consecutive MotoGP sprint races for the first time in his career with victory at the Grand Prix of Valencia, the world championship runner-up leading from start to finish at the Ricardo Tormo circuit on Saturday.
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Marquez, who won last Saturday’s sprint race at the Portuguese Grand Prix, qualified second and vaulted past pole-sitter Marco Bezzecchi (Aprilia) into the first corner on the opening lap and never looked back, crossing the line after 13 laps with an advantage of 1.149 seconds over fellow Spaniard Pedro Acosta (KTM), with Ducati’s Fabio Di Giannantonio rounding out the podium in third.
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Acosta, who finished on the podium for the fifth time in the past six sprints, stayed glued to Marquez’s rear wheel before the Ducati rider broke nine-tenths of a second clear on lap five, extending his margin to 1.6 seconds on the following lap and cruising home from there.
“Super happy to win today,” Marquez said after adding to his sprint wins in Portimao and Silverstone earlier this season.
“During all the weekend we suffered a bit more than normal, but today on the sprint I say ‘we need to win, we need to be there’. I attacked from the start and I saw that I could put my rhythm and save a little bit of tyre in the beginning, and then push at the end. We did it, and I controlled the gap in a very good way.”
Acosta was untroubled for second after Marquez broke clear, while Di Giannantonio, who qualified third, emerged from a spirited battle with Aprilia’s Raul Fernandez to take third place on the penultimate lap.
Bezzecchi, whose late gamble to switch to the soft Michelin front tyre as the air and track temperatures plummeted backfired, fell to sixth on lap one and could only recover to fifth, but the result saw the Italian secure third place in this year’s world championship standings.
Acosta moved up to fourth past Ducati’s two-time world champion Francesco Bagnaia, who qualified just 16th on Saturday after his bike stopped in Q1, and only recovered to 14th in the sprint.
Australia’s Jack Miller was given a long-lap penalty for a clash with Ducati’s Fermin Aldeguer, which dropped the Yamaha rider out of points into 12th place, 11.148secs behind the victorious Marquez.
Miller, who qualified eighth, made contact with Aldeguer’s Ducati at the second corner on lap three and was instructed by race stewards to drop three positions; when he hadn’t by lap nine, the 30-year-old was assessed a long-lap penalty that dropped him from ninth to 12th place.
The 27-lap Grand Prix of Valencia, the final race of the 22-round MotoGP season, will take place at 12am on Monday (AEDT).