German MotoGP, Sachsenring – Race Results

* Rookie

Jorge Martin wins a thrilling duel with reigning champion Francesco Bagnaia for victory in the German MotoGP at Sachsenring, cutting the Italian’s title lead.

After breaking clear of the pack, Bagnaia stalked the Pramac rider until a pass with ten laps to go.

But Martin responded and the pair were literally inseparable by the end of the penultimate lap, when Bagnaia clipped Martin’s rear wheel!

The Spaniard then held on to win by just 0.064s, completing a Sachsenring double after Saturday’s Sprint win.

It was Martin’s first official MotoGP victory since his rookie 2021 season

Johann Zarco completed the podium – despite a last lap scare at Turn 1 – in a race that saw Ducati riders fill all but one of the top nine places, the exception being KTM’s Jack Miller in sixth.

• German MotoGP: New World Championship standings

Miller had delivered another rocket start to take the holeshot and this time kept Bagnaia at bay through Turn 1.

But a big scare when the rear tyre slid on entry to the Turn 11 waterfall corner, similar to Marc Marquez’s Friday moment, saw the Australian swamped on the exit and down to fourth. Miller would never recover.

Bagnaia’s reign didn’t last long with Martin passing him for the lead into the penultimate corner on lap 3 of 30.

However, unlike on Saturday, the Pramac Ducati rider couldn’t escape with Bagnaia tracking his every move – just out of tyre heating range – while Luca Marini led a big chasing pack in third.

Just as in the Sprint, Miller’s team-mate Brad Binder found himself staring at the rear wheel of the VR46 rider, but this time made a potential podium pass on lap 10.

Binder’s Saturday adversary Johann Zarco demoted Marini to fifth soon after and the pair were poised to reignite their last-lap Sprint battle… until Binder ran wide into Turn 9 and ed out at high speed with 12 laps to go. That put Zarco onto the podium, ahead of Marco Bezzecchi.

Up front, Bagnaia continued to loiter just over half-a-second behind Martin in what was now clearly a victory duel.

Bagnaia briefly moved within striking distance at the midway stage but couldn’t afford to sit too close to the Spaniard for long due to the risk of overheating his front tyre in the dirty air.

With no pass forthcoming, Bagnaia returned to the safe half-second buffer until closing back onto Martin’s rear wheel with 10 laps to go. The reigning champion then repeated Martin’s earlier pass on the exit of the Waterfall and into the penultimate corner to retake the lead.

But Martin kept his hopes of a counterattack alive by sticking to Bagnaia’s red machine, then landed a retaliatory blow with another pass into the same Turn 12 with six laps remaining.

Running the same hard front, medium rear tyre combination, the Pramac rider’s fairing design was the only significant technical difference between them.

“4

Martin thwarted another Turn 12 pass with three laps to go, then parked his GP23 defensively on the inside of Turn 1 as the penultimate lap began – before Bagnaia clipped Martin’s rear wheel at the final corner!

That gave Martin a 0.3s advantage for the start of the last lap and, after a wise defensive line into the final turn, held on to victory by just 0.064s!

Fabio Quartararo and Monster Yamaha team-mate Franco Morbidelli were both running a (different) rear seat wing after 12th and 15th places in the Sprint, but were just 12th (Morbidelli) and 13th (Quartararo) in the main race. Quartararo, like Aleix Espargaro, likely suffered by running the soft rear.

Maverick Vinales, who ed from the Sprint, was forced out by an early engine failure on his Aprilia.

All riders except Aleix Espargaro and Quartararo (soft rears) used the hard front tyre and medium rear.

“5

After suffering ‘a very small fracture in the first finger of his left hand’ during a fifth fall of the weekend, in warm-up, Marc Marquez was declared fit to race but – to no great surprise – instead opted to withdraw from the Grand Prix. 

Practice for the Dutch TT at Assen, the final event before the MotoGP summer break, starts on Friday morning.

• Sachsenring: Latest Moto2 Results
• Sachsenring: Latest Moto3 Results

Germany was the nadir of Francesco Bagnaia’s 2022 world championship season, slipping 91 points from Fabio Quartararo after an early fall before fighting back to take the title in the second half of the year.

Sachsenring is Marc Marquez’s most successful circuit, with eleven wins at the German Grand Prix, including eight in the MotoGP class. Absent last season due to arm surgery, when Quartararo took victory, Marquez hadn’t been beaten at the tight and twisty anti-clockwise circuit since 2009 in 125cc.

Marquez’s Repsol Honda team-mate Joan Mir remains sidelined by a hand injury from Mugello last weekend. LCR Honda’s Alex Rins was also absent after fracturing his right tibia and fibula in Italy. The COTA winner won’t be fit to return until after the summer break. Rins’ team-mate Takaaki Nakagami was handed a Kalex chassis for the first time this weekend, but injured his hand on Friday.

GASGAS Tech3’s Pol Espargaro has abandoned a planned return in Germany and was again replaced by KTM test rider Jonas Folger, meaning a home rider was taking part in the premier class. Espargaro is also thought unlikely to be fit for next weekend’s Assen round.

Older brother Aleix, diagnosed with two broken bones in his right heel after struggling with bicycle injuries throughout the Mugello weekend, limped away from a at turn one after just ten minutes.