Jorge Martin cruised to a clear win in the San Marino Grand Prix to close ever further on MotoGP series leader Francesco Bagnaia, who finished third.
The Pramac Ducati man aced the start to convert pole position into an early lead, though Bagnaia heaped on the pressure as he tried to find a way to the front of the order.
The factory Ducati rider looked left and right for a way around the satellite Desmosedici ahead but to no avail, Bagnaia eventually beginning to drop back away from Martin as the encounter moved past half-distance.
By this point Martin started to pull the pin and drop his laptimes, leaving Bagnaia to fend off the advances of VR46 Ducati man Marco Bezzecchi – the Italian sliding through to second on his countryman at Turn 8 as Bagnaia looked to be struggling with his physical condition.
Despite suffering a late scare by picking up a warning for track limits, Martin controlled things up front to eventually take the chequered flag 1.3 seconds clear of Bezzecchi to secure his second Sunday success of 2023, the Spaniard narrowing Bagnaia’s points lead as a result.
The reigning world champion really started to fall back in the closing laps towards a charging Dani Pedrosa, the KTM tester doing his best to try and secure a first premier class rostrum since he won the 2017 Valencia GP.
Bagnaia had just enough in hand though to claim the final spot on the rostrum just seven days on from his horrendous Catalan GP crash, and only 3.8 seconds from the victorious Martin.
Pedrosa had to make do with his second fourth place result in as many days – although still a mighty impressive performance in only his second event since retiring from full-time competition at the end of the 2018 campaign – while Aprilia’s Maverick Vinales had a quiet afternoon to complete the top five.
Miguel Oliveira got the better of Honda’s Marc Marquez to claim sixth as the six-time premier class world champion began to fade backwards having at one point started to challenge Vinales, Marquez though holding off the other RNF entry of Raul Fernandez to bring home a welcome seventh to the Japanese manufacturer.
Eighth still marked Fernandez’s best ever premier class result as the Spaniard looked to make a decent step in performance with the RS-GP this weekend, while Luca Marini was ninth for VR46 Ducati.
Johann Zarco looked to be falling back through the field in the middling-portion of the contest as he sat 12th trying to fend off the advances of Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo, though the Pramac rider managed to find speed late on to carve back to tenth ahead of Gresini’s Alex Marquez and the other factory Aprilia of Aleix Espargaro.
Quartararo was best Yamaha in 13th ahead of KTM’s Brad Binder, the South African rallying back to score points following a crash at Turn 14 early on while running fourth, as Franco Morbidelli completed the points scorers on the sister Yamaha M1.
Jack Miller’s horror weekend at Misano failed to improve on Sunday after crashing out with Ducati test rider Michele Pirro while scrapping outside the points-paying positions, while Honda’s Joan Mir and GasGas’ Pol Espargaro also crashed out during the closing stanza.
Bagnaia’s championship advantage now stands at 36 points heading into the flyaway portion of the 2023 schedule, with Bezzecchi now 65 markers adrift of the series lead ahead of the Indian GP in two weeks time.
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