Jorge Lorenzo cruised to his maiden Ducati victory in a dramatic MotoGP Italian Grand Prix, as Marc Marquez finished a lowly 16th after an early fall.
Just as he has done for the past two races, Lorenzo leaped off the line to take the holeshot into the first corner ahead of poleman Valentino Rossi, while Marquez slotted into third after an aggressive move on Danilo Petrucci at Luco.
Marquez passed Rossi for second at the start of the third lap, while Andrea Dovizioso eased his way onto the back of the podium battle from seventh on the grid in fifth.
Lorenzo held firm in the lead, and the pressure from Marquez was relented somewhat on lap five when the Honda rider crashed at the Scarperia.
Marquez was able to rejoin, but was 24 seconds down on the lead in 18th. Meanwhile at the front, Dovizioso cruised passed Rossi into Savelli and began the chase on his Ducati team-mate.
Lorenzo reacted to the threat of Dovizioso, however, and began to build up an advantage which ended up at 6.4 seconds as he crossed thel ine for his first win since Valencia 2016.
With Marquez's demise, and unable to claw back any advantage on his team-mate, Dovizioso settled into second to the flag to close his championship deficit down to 29 points.
After fading in the middle of the race, Rossi regrouped in the closing stages to repel Andrea Iannone and put Dovizioso under some pressure over the final lap to complete the podium at his home race, and become the first rider in grand prix history to surpass the 5000-point mark.
Rossi's home podium promoted him to second in the standings now, 23 points adrift of Marquez, who ended up a distant 16th, and five points ahead of Yamaha stablemate Maverick Vinales, who was eighth after a poor start from third on the grid.
Iannone got to the chequered flag in fourth, though just 0.022s ahead of Suzuki team-mate Alex Rins, while Cal Crutchlow was top independent rider across the line in sixth on his LCR Honda.
Petrucci was set to give Ducati its first ever podium lockout in MotoGP, but dropped to seventh in the latter laps, while fellow Desmosedici rider Alvaro Bautista shadowed Vinales home in ninth.
Johann Zarco completed the top 10 on his Tech3 Yamaha ahead of KTM's Pol Espargaro, while the sister Tech3 M1 of Hafizh Syahrin and Avintia's Tito Rabat split the RC16-mounted duo, with Smith 14th. Franco Morbidelli took the final point in his home race aboard his Marc VDS Honda.
The attrition rate in the early stages was high, with Honda stablemates Dani Pedrosa and Takaaki Nakagami [LCR] going down at Luco on lap one.
Karel Abraham, Scott Redding, Jack Miller and Aleix Espargaro also failed to make it to the finish at Mugello.
