Francesco Bagnaia extended his slim lead in the MotoGP championship by continuing his golden run at the Austrian Grand Prix, with Ducati’s reigning world champion winning for the third year in a row in Spielberg to take his seventh win of the season.
The Italian, winner of Saturday’s sprint race, dominated Sunday’s 28-lap Grand Prix after overtaking main rival Jorge Martin (Ducati) at the start of the second lap. Bagnaia won by 3.232 seconds to take a five-point lead in the championship.
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Martin, who broke the circuit lap record in qualifying by taking pole position after seriously cutting his left thumb in a freak accident in the bathroom of his campervan at the track on Friday, finished second behind Bagnaia in both races this weekend, but has not won a Grand Prix. Prix since round five in France as Bagnaia has won five of the past six Sunday races.
Bagnaia’s Ducati factory mate Enea Bastianini finished third, 7.357 seconds from victory, after front row starter Marc Marquez (Ducati) went wide at the first corner and dropped to 14th before flying through the pack to finish fourth .
Brad Binder (KTM) was fifth and 18.537 seconds behind Bagnaia as Ducati locked out the podium places for the eighth Grand Prix in a row.
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Martin led across the line to end the first lap but Bagnaia took control at the first corner of the next lap and set a ferocious pace, Martin falling a second behind after 14 laps and never challenging again as Bagnaia’s ruthless consistency proved too much.
Bagnaia, who won the 2022 and 2023 Grand Prix in Austria as well as the 2023 sprint, has now led 110 of the past 112 laps at the circuit over the past three seasons. The win was his seventh of the year in 11 starts, matching his tally in his 2022 and 2023 title-winning campaigns with nine events remaining.
“The pace was incredible. I think Jorge and I have done something incredible in terms of speed and consistency,” said Bagnaia, who won the sprint/Grand Prix double for the third time in the past five events.
“I tried to do a little bit better than him every lap to close the gap, because I knew that in the last laps I could do everything with the rear tire. But we win here three times in a row, it’s fantastic.”
Australian Jack Miller looked on course for his strongest weekend of the season before crashing out from sixth on lap 11, with the KTM rider having qualified an equal fifth of the season and finishing fifth in the Saturday sprint, which matched his performance from Portugal in the second round.
The 29-year-old, who is looking to extend his MotoGP career to an eleventh season next year with an eleventh hour reprieve from the newly formed Pramac Yamaha team, made an excellent start to Sunday’s race, running fourth in the opening seven laps . but slipped entering the Turn 2 chicane and climbed back up to finish in 20th place, 44.183 seconds behind Bagnaia.
Miller sits 15th in the championship ahead of the next round in Aragon in Spain from August 30 to September 1.
