MotoGP: Vinales Back to Winning Ways in Emilia Romagna as Bagnaia Crashes Out

The MotoGP World Championship was in action at Misano for the second time in one week for the seventh round of their 2020 season. Maverick Vinales started from his second consecutive pole position.

Jack Miller made the holeshot from the middle of the front row, but his time at the front did not last long, and Maverick Vinales led the first lap. From there, the Spaniard bolted and he was pulling clear in the opening stages. 

Miller was acting as something of a cork in the bottle in the first laps, but once he had been cleared by Francesco Bagnaia the Italian was immediately hunting down Vinales for the lead. 

The lead changed on lap six when Vinales ran wide in turn four, allowing Bagnaia to cut underneath, and from that point the #63 stretched his gap out to 1.4 seconds. 

That is how it stayed for much of the mid-part of the race, with Bagnaia and Vinales lapping almost identically, but on lap 21 Bagnaia got into turn six slightly wide, and when he went for the throttle the front tucked and his victory hopes ended up in a cloud of dust in the gravel trap at the top end of the back straight. It was harsh luck for Bagnaia, who had ridden almost perfectly up until that point. But it shows how hard it is to win a MotoGP race in 2020, especially in the second race of a double-header when the level is even higher than usual. 

Vinales inherited from Bagnaia the lead, and his gap back to Pol Espargaro was four seconds. It was a gap that proved to be unrecoverable for the rest of the field, and Vinales silenced his critics of one week ago by taking his first victory of the season to now sit just one point off the championship lead. 

Behind, Espargaro’s pace started to suffer in the closing stages. Throughout the weekend the #44 had asserted that the only tyre that could work with the KTM was the medium, and yet he chose the soft tyre for the race – possibly due to track temperature. It was a strategy that worked for the Spaniard for 25 laps, as he was able to hold off Fabio Quartararo with a superb defensive display. 

Unfortunately for Espargaro, Joan Mir had arrived in the final three laps and, just like one week ago, the #36 had his eyes on breaking down an impregnable wall. Last week it was Valentino Rossi who fell victim to Mir’s clinical overtaking late on to be denied a podium, and today it was Pol Espargaro. Having passed Quartararo for third in turn two three laps from the flag, and at the first time of asking, Mir turned his attention immediately to Espargaro, and passed him almost exactly one lap later in turn one. 

Mir was uncatchable from there, and escaped with second place. Quartararo took advantage of Espargaro’s disturbed rhythm through the first section on lap 26 to pass in turn three, and take the podium from the KTM rider. 

It was not to be, though, for the Frenchman, as he received a long lap penalty starting the final lap for track limits. He did not take the long lap, and instead took the three-second time penalty which dropped him back behind Espargaro, handing the #44 his second podium in three races. 

Mir’s recovery was incredible once again, coming from seemingly nowhere with 10 laps to go to be on the podium at the flag, and this week one place higher than last. Only he and Vinales have taken three podiums now in 2020, and all of Mir’s have come in the last four races. The only other riders to have taken more than one podium in the last four Grands Prix are Pol Espargaro and Jack Miller. The Spaniard now lies four points back in the championship, and he hasn’t even won a race yet – still no one can match his consistency. 

Third place was just rewards for Espargaro after his defensive display and this was arguably his best ride of the season. Under pressure for much of the second half of the race from Quartararo, he never cracked, even when he ran out of rear grip and he is the only rider other than Mir to have been on the podium in both the Red Bull Ring and Misano. 

The long lap penalty of Quartararo obviously cost him the podium but arguably more importantly it cost him three points in this incredibly tight World Championship. A good example of just how tight it is is Valentino Rossi, who crashed in to day’s race but is still only 26 points off the championship lead, which is only eight further back than he was after last week’s San Marino Grand Prix. Realistically, Quartararo’s chances of the title are stronger than Rossi’s, partly because he has more points at this stage but mostly because he is one of the fastest riders on the grid when the bike is working well, and that is why the three lost points today could be critical, because the Yamaha was working great in Misano.

Actually, the race results from the two races in Misano could arguably be quite disappointing for the Iwata marque. They were easily the fastest last week, and going into the race a Yamaha lock-out of the podium was the expectation, and yet from the San Marino Grand Prix last week and the Grand Prix of Emilia Romagna this week, Yamaha have taken just two podiums. On the flip side, both of those podiums have been wins, and Yamaha now have four wins from eight races, twice as many as the next best – KTM – with two, so it’s give-and-take.

Miguel Oliveira was another rider to stage a strong recovery in the race to go from 15th on the grid to finish fifth. He is also still in the championship hunt, 25 points down on the leader. 

Takaaki Nakagami salvaged sixth from the weekend, having wrecked two bikes on Saturday. For sure, he benefited from the mistakes of others but on a day when it was clearly easy to make a mistake, he avoided it. An important day for his championship also, he is 21 points behind. 

Alex Marquez took his best result in the MotoGP class with seventh in Misano, and finishing ahead of championship leader Andrea Dovizioso who struggled to ninth. The fact that Marquez beat Dovizioso on pace is as impressive for Marquez as it is depressing for Dovizioso whose status as championship leader is somewhat hollow after missing the speed to challenge for the win in both races at Misano. 

Behind Dovizioso was Morbidelli, whose weekend was made more difficult by a stomach bug that had been present pretty much since his win last weekend. The Italian’s race was made even more difficult by Aleix Espargaro who crashed in turn eight on the first lap and forced Morbidelli to take avoiding action. The Italian kept his championship alive by finishing ninth which actually was enough for him to improve his position in the standings, in which he is now fifth. 

Danilo Petrucci’s race started promisingly as he was running inside the top six after the fall of Rossi on the second lap. However, things soon started going downhill for the #9, who ended up in 10th courtesy of the misfortune of others. 

Johann Zarco had a disappointing day in 11th, and made little impact on the race, although 12th for Alex Rins is even more disappointing and highlights his struggles this weekend, in which he has struggled for grip. Bradley Smith finished 13th, and he was the final classified rider. 

With only 13 finishers, it goes without saying there were plenty of retirements. The first was the aforementioned Aleix Espargaro, before Brad Binder crashed out on lap three, which he followed up with another crash on lap four that ended his race. Then Jack Miller retired with bike issues and Tito Rabat crashed at turn one, before Valentino Rossi retired after his second lap crash in turn four. Bagnaia was the next to go, before Iker Lecuona crashed out of what was an extremely impressive ride from the rookie, he was seventh when he dropped the #27 KTM.