Brad Binder (KTM) has begun to get the hang of the uniqueness of the Saturday MotoGP Sprint race. The South African scored his second victory -after Argentina's- in a beautiful final battle with his teammate Jack Miller and Pecco Bagnaia, second.
The short race was left without Spaniards on the podium. Jorge Martín was fourth, although the most outstanding was Dani Pedrosa, sixth, in his second race since he retired in 2018.
The race got off to a rough start, with a multiple crash in the second corner. Morbidelli on the inside took Àlex Márquez ahead in a run, and Augusto Fernández and the leader, Marco Bezzecchi, fell on the rebound. Race direction decreed red flag and restart of the test. The four fallen were able to reenlist.
The second start gave Aleix Espargaró another chance, because in the first he lost favor on pole position at the start, passed by the two KTMs of Miller and Binder before reaching the first corner, and a few angles later Bagnaia also passed him.
The adventure of Aleix Espargaró, pole sitter in the morning, ended on the sixth lap when he rolled on the ground in a fall in the Ángel Nieto curve when he was fifth chasing the leading group.
With two laps to go, the two KTMs pulled away from the Ducatis of Miller and Bagnaia. Binder attacked his Australian teammate and yanked to win the second Sprint of the year, after the one in Argentina.
Bagnaia was second, beating Jorge Martín, fourth, and Pedrosa closed his return to racing with sixth place. Bezzecchi, the leader, was ninth, so he took the last point and retains command of the World Cup by 3 points over Bagnaia and 17 over Viñales, who was seventh.
