Jack Miller lived his day of glory in Japan before saying goodbye to Ducati. The Australian is the sixth different winner of the year in a race in which Marc Márquez was one of the winners with his creditable fourth place in his first complete race in three months. The other was Fabio Quartararo, who with his eighth final position saw his lead reinforced, favored by the fall of Pecco Bagnaia and the zero of Aleix Espargaró (16th).
Marc Márquez, who had a crash in the morning warm-up, without physical consequences, opted for the soft rear tire to have more grip when starting from pole, his first preferred position 1,071 days later. Beside him, Zarco and Binder. Aleix Espargaró after the warm-up lap entered the pits to change bikes and left the pit-lane, the last one. Goodbye to your chance to cut the leader.
At the start, Binder took the lead in the first corner, with a cautious Márquez, without risking, so as not to finish early as in Aragón. In the third corner he was also overtaken by Jorge Martín, who was the fastest in the warm-up and took the lead before the end of the first lap.
The advantage of pole position was fading for Márquez with each lap. In the second he was overtaken by Miller and Oliveira, who delayed him to fifth place, in which he found his place to roll without scares and accumulate kilometers, followed by Maverick Viñales. The Australian climbed strongly, launched with his Ducati, reached Martín and snatched first place from him on lap 4/23. The two Ducatis pushed at a very high pace and quickly opened a gap of 2 seconds over the KTMs of Oliveira and Binder (v. 7/23).
Behind, the race attention was on how the title contenders would progress. Quartararo was stuck in his ninth place on the grid, without winning or losing. Bagnaia didn't gain too much ground either, one place, from 12th to 11th, squeezed by a Bastianini who challenged him to win the position after climbing from 15th on the grid.
After the first third of the race (v. 8/24), Miller was very plugged in, breaking the track record and distancing himself from Martín, taking an advantage of 3.2s (v. 11/23), while The man from Madrid was 1.8s behind the KTMs of Binder and Oliveira and Márquez, who formed a third group.
Bastianini executed his threat on Bagnaia and snatched 10th place from him, deducting a point. Davide Tardozzi, the Ducati boss, was writhing in anger. Provisionally, Bagnaia would give up 2 points to Quartararo, 8th.
In the last 10 laps, Miller only increased his huge lead over Martin, which was 4.2 seconds. In the absence of five (v. 20/24) it was already 5.2 seconds. His pace was diabolical, as the Aussie has rarely been seen.
From behind, the stability of the positions was fractured with some worthwhile attacks. Marini overtook Viñales in 6th place; Márquez tightened his pace to get closer to Oliveira's fourth place; and Binder also squeezed Martín for the second, although the man from Madrid knew how to keep it.
The Catalan conquered fourth place with an interior to the Portuguese with three laps to go. It is his best result of the year, tied with the fourth in Jerez.
Although the funniest thing was Bagnaia's fight with Bastianini for ninth place. The one on the red Ducati worked hard to overtake his countryman from Gresini with four laps to go, so that he would only lose one point to Quartararo. In the last two laps, Pecco closed in on the Frenchman, tried to overtake him on the penultimate lap but went down. A zero that stops him in his options to fight for the title.
So Quartararo was the other winner of the day with his eighth place. The leader took oil out of Japan by adding 8 more points to Pecco, 18 in total, and another 8 to Aleix Espargaró, 25. More than if he had won with the pursuers behind him. Bastianini takes 49. The two-time championship is leveled at the Frenchman from Yamaha.
