2023-11-12 13:28:33
Sunday, November 12, 2023, 07:50 | Updated 12:28 p.m.
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An intense battle was expected in Sepang between the two title candidates, who started in the first two places on the grid and Álex Márquez who had already won the ten-lap sprint on Saturday. However, with twice the race distance, the excitement was half or less… because there were barely a couple of flashes between Bagnaia and Martín, and a tedious MotoGP train with hardly any overtaking at the front.
The figure of Enea Bastianini emerged on Sunday. The revenant A rider who, with last year’s results, had taken Martín’s place in the Ducati factory team, but whose injuries this year had affected him throughout the season. Already in the sprint he was with the best and acted as a bodyguard with Bagnaia, to prevent the Italian from giving up the podium, but in Sunday’s race he was not going to give away a victory. And even more so when his continuity in the official structure is more questioned than ever due to the push of Martín himself.
Bastianini had an impeccable race and kept Álex Márquez at bay at all times, who was unable to attack at any time. «When the front tire gets hot and you are half a second away it is like fighting against a wall. You go to 0.8, you go back to 0.5, it separates you again… but it was too risky to attack. In any case, the man from Cervera has his best weekend in MotoGP, being the rider who has scored the most points of the weekend and with the goal of “settlement in the top 5 of the championship.”
And behind, the battle for the title was reduced to two overtaking attempts by Martín on laps 3 and 4 that Bagnaia immediately stifled by returning the maneuver. The Italian kept the podium and Martín let himself go at the end of the race seeing that it was impossible to go beyond fourth. In the classification, they arrived in Malaysia separated by 13 points and leave with 14 points in favor of the current champion. Although with one less race and only 74 points at stake in Qatar and Valencia where Martín warns that “from now on I will take more risks. I have already secured second place, so I don’t care if I come second by one point or by eighty.
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#Bagnaia #Martín #score #draw #Malaysia