Francesco Bagnaia extended his slim MotoGP championship lead by continuing his golden run at the Austrian Grand Prix, Ducati’s reigning world champion winning in Spielberg for the third year in succession to take his seventh victory of the season.
The Italian, winner of Saturday’s sprint race, dominated Sunday’s 28-lap Grand Prix after he overtook chief title rival Jorge Martin (Ducati) at the beginning of lap two, Bagnaia winning by 3.232 seconds to take a five-point championship advantage.
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Martin, who shattered the circuit lap record in qualifying by taking pole position after badly cutting his left thumb in a bizarre bathroom mishap in his trackside motorhome on Friday, finished second to Bagnaia in both races across the weekend, but hasn’t won a Grand Prix since round five in France as Bagnaia has won five of the past six Sunday races.
Bagnaia’s factory Ducati teammate Enea Bastianini finished third, 7.357 seconds from victory, after front-row starter Marc Marquez (Ducati) ran wide at the first corner and dropped to 14th before scything through the pack to finish fourth.
Brad Binder (KTM) was fifth and 18.537secs behind Bagnaia as Ducati locked out the podium places for the eighth Grand Prix in succession.
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Martin led across the line to end the first lap, but Bagnaia took control at the first corner on the following lap and set a ferocious pace, Martin falling to a second behind after 14 laps and never challenging thereafter as Bagnaia’s relentless consistency proved too much.
Bagnaia, who won the 2022 and 2023 Grands Prix in Austria as well as the 2023 sprint, has now led 110 of the past 112 laps at the circuit over the past three seasons. The victory was his seventh of the year in 11 starts, matching his tally in his title-winning 2022 and 2023 campaigns with nine events remaining.
“It was incredible the pace. I think me and Jorge, we did something unbelievable in terms of speed and consistency,” Bagnaia, won took the sprint/Grand Prix double for the third time in the past five events, said.
“I was trying to do just a little better compared to him every lap to open the gap because I was I was knowing in the last laps could do anything with the rear tyre. But three times in a row we are winning here, it’s fantastic.”
Australia’s Jack Miller looked on course for his strongest weekend of the season before crashing from sixth place on lap 11, the KTM rider having qualified an equal season-best fifth and finishing fifth in the Saturday sprint, matching his performance from Portugal in round two.
The 29-year-old, set to extend his MotoGP career into an 11th season next year with an 11th-hour reprieve from the newly-formed Pramac Yamaha team, made an outstanding start to Sunday’s race to run fourth for the opening seven laps, but slipped off on the entry to the Turn 2 chicane and remounted to finish in 20th place, 44.183secs behind Bagnaia.
Miller sits 15th in the championship standings ahead of the next round at Aragon in Spain from August 30 to September 1.
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