Quartararo extends MotoGP lead with dominant British GP win

Fabio Quartararo cantered to a fifth win of the year with a commanding run in the British Grand Prix at Silverstone to extend his series lead to 62 points.

Quartararo was shuffled back over the opening couple of tours to fourth by a hard-charging Aleix Espargaro and Francesco Bagnaia, though after settling in the only direction his M1 was going was forwards.

Over the subsequent few laps he managed to put passes on both Bagnaia and Espargaro’s Aprilia to move back to second, before chasing down pole-man and early leader Pol Espargaro’s Honda-making the pass for the lead less than half-a-dozen tours into the contest.

The Frenchman from here-on-in edged away from the rest of the field, crafting a near four-second advantage over Alex Rins in the closing stages which he controlled to perfection, ultimately taking the chequered flag 3.5 seconds clear of the tight battle for the runners-up spot.

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Rins had managed to carve his way through from tenth on the grid to second in the middling-stages of the contest, though he found himself unable to pull away from Aleix and Ducati’s Jack Miller as they continued to sustain pressure-the former keen to grab only his second career rostrum and Aprilia’s first in the premier class in over two decades.

Miller wasn’t interested in Aprilia’s milestone though and mounted an attack on Espargaro on the final lap, utilising a strong run through Farm to five past the RS-GP to snatch third into Village.

Espargaro wasn’t beaten yet though and pulled off a nice cut-back manoeuvre to move back ahead of the Desmosedici into Aintree, while a clean final few corners saw him scream across the line to secure the Italian marque’s first premier class podium since the year 2000 at Donington Park behind Rins, who had been let off by the tussling pair behind to take his first podium of the year.  

Miller was therefore forced to settle for fourth ahead of Pol, who had begun to struggle with front-end grip towards the end and faded to fifth.

Brad Binder completed one of his customary late-race charges to snatch sixth from a suffering Joan Mir with only a few circulations remaining having run 12^th early on, while Iker Lecuona backed up his fellow KTM racer as he raced through to a strong seventh for Tech 3.

Alex Marquez enjoyed a more competitive outing for LCR Honda in eighth ahead of Mir, while Danilo Petrucci completed the top ten on the second Tech 3 RC16.

Johann Zarco lacked speed throughout the race and ended up only 11^th, though Ducati stable-mate Bagnaia fared even worse after running into tyre trouble-the Italian slumping all the way to 14^th in the end.

Another rider to run out of tyre grip was Valentino Rossi, the Petronas SRT seeing his encouraging British GP weekend go up in smoke having run well in the top eight early on before falling to 18^th ahead of only rookie team-mate Jake Dixon who made his MotoGP debut this weekend.

Both Marc Marquez and Jorge Martin failed to even see the end of the opening lap after the Honda pilot tried to make an aggressive pass on the Pramac man at Club, Marquez going down after making contact with the Styrian GP victor and sweeping the pair out in the process-eliminating them from the race on the spot.  

Quartararo’s British masterclass sees him open up a yawning 65 point gap over Mir at the head of the series standings following a tough day for his nearest rivals, Bagnaia now 70 adrift of the Yamaha man.