Bagnaia wins Barcelona MotoGP sprint to take season to final race

BARCELONA: Francesco Bagnaia produced a commanding performance to win Saturday´s sprint at the Barcelona MotoGP, ensuring that the battle for the world championship title would go to the last race of the season.

Championship leader Jorge Martin finished third behind Bagnaia´s Ducati-Lenovo teammate Enea Bastianini and will take a reduced 19-point lead into Sunday´s grand prix.

“Job done for today but tomorrow we need to repeat what we did,” Bagnaia told TNT. “I just tried to be smooth in the first sector. As soon as I was leading I knew my pace was good enough to open a gap. That was the objective for today. I didn´t need to push too much to open the gap. “Jorge did a fantastic job so it´s fantastic that it´s like this. But let´s see tomorrow.”

Bagnaia arrived in Barcelona with a 24-point deficit and knowing that he effectively needed to win both the sprint and the grand prix to have any chance of denying Martin a first world title.

The Italian has already won 10 of 19 grands prix this season but his lack of consistency has let him down.

But having won in Malaysia a fortnight ago he was again in imperious form as he set the pace in qualifying to take pole for both the sprint and the grand prix.

Martin, in contrast, could only qualify fourth, on the second row of the grid.

The Spaniard, however, made a good start although not good enough to catch Bagnaia who made sure he didn´t repeat the error he made in the sprint in Sepang when he crashed out early after again starting on pole.

While Bagnaia ran his own race up ahead Martin was locked in a thrilling duel with Bastianini, the two swapping places throughout until the final lap when the Italian swept past on turn 5 and held on for second.

“Tomorrow will be another story but I´m happy with the podium,” said Martin, who has been the most consistent driver of the season and remains the overwhelming favourite to win his first world championship.