Marc Marquez won his seventh successive MotoGP sprint race and his 13th in 14 starts this season, Ducati’s runaway world championship leader dominating at the return of the Hungarian Grand Prix on Saturday.
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The 32-year-old took his eighth pole position of the season earlier on Saturday and left the field in his wake as chaos erupted behind him at Balaton Park, the Spaniard leading all 13 laps and winning by 2.095 seconds to extend his world championship lead.
Ducati won a sprint for the 28th straight time and locked out all three podium places, VR46 Ducati teammates Fabio Di Giannantonio finishing second and Franco Morbidelli third after Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo kicked off a wild first lap by ramming into KTM’s Enea Bastianini at the first corner.
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Quartararo, from sixth on the grid, narrowly missed Di Giannantonio before crashing into the rear of Bastianini’s bike, causing Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi to check up and fall back to 10th from second on the grid.
Later in the first lap, Bastianini took out Honda’s Johann Zarco, with Quartararo and Bastianini likely to face grid penalties for Sunday’s Grand Prix after both incidents were to be reviewed by the race stewards after the sprint.
Out front, Marquez was untroubled as he built his lead to over one second on lap four, and extended his margin to 2.7secs as his championship lead swelled to 152 points over younger brother Alex Marquez, who finished eighth after qualifying a season-worst 11th for Gresini Ducati.
PIT TALK PODCAST: Marquez salutes and Yamaha slumps in Austria, but what’s on the cards for a brand-new track in Hungary? Listen to Pit Talk below.
“I heard somebody super-close in the first corner, but from that point I tried to take my rhythm and the first lap I was riding already in a very good way,” Marc Marquez said of Quartararo’s crash on the first lap.
“I tried to keep a constant pace, and I saw that was enough to open a gap.”
Marquez’s win was his 13th in succession, after the Spaniard came to the first Hungarian Grand Prix since 1992 after sweeping the sprints and Grands Prix in the past six rounds from Aragon to Austria. The six-time MotoGP champion hasn’t been beaten in a race since he finished third in the British Grand Prix on May 25.
Australia’s Jack Miller, hit with a three-place grid penalty for impeding Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia in Friday practice, qualified 14th and finished 12th as the leading Yamaha, 14.097secs behind Marquez.
Miller took advantage of the first-lap chaos to advance to 10th, and kept Bagnaia behind him for the entire 13-lap distance, Bagnaia finishing 13th after qualifying 15th, his worst grid position since the 2022 Portuguese Grand Prix.
The 26-lap Hungarian Grand Prix, round 14 of the 22-round MotoGP season, will take place at 10pm on Sunday (AEST).
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