Francesco Bagnaia will go into the MotoGP summer break on a high after claiming a ‘special’ victory in the Dutch TT at Assen to extend his title lead.

The reigning champion sealed his seventh victory of the season on the Lenovo Ducati, denying fellow Italian Marco Bezzecchi a clean sweep after the VR46 Ducati rider had dominated practice and qualifying and won the Sprint race on Saturday.

Bezzecchi tried all he could to close the gap to Bagnaia after finally passing Red Bull KTM’s Brad Binder to move into second place, but Bagnaia was able to maintain a steady gap of around one second on the final laps, eventually winning by 1.2s as he repeated his victory from 2022.

He is now 35 points clear of Pramac Ducati’s Jorge Martin – who finished fifth – while Bezzecchi is only one point further back in third in the championship after eight rounds.

“It’s fantastic, it wasn’t easy because [the riders] behind were pushing a lot and I was trying to open the gap, which I just managed to open on the last laps,” said Bagnaia, who has a tattoo of the Assen circuit on his arm.

“Finally I was breathing more because I was quite on the limit, but first of all I love this track, this crowd is fantastic so thank you all.

“It means more than last year because the way we started, I was quite scared to start a weekend like this because I didn’t have any feeling.

“We needed time to improve our situation but in the morning we tried something different and it worked, like in Sachsenring, and I felt better,” he added.

“The degradation was quite slow but the temperature was so high that it was very difficult to remain constant with the tyres. The front was a bit too soft but this was normal for everybody.

“But I enjoyed because Brad was always there pushing me, and I just tried to build this gap lap by lap and then finally, winning like this is always special before the summer break so I’m very happy.”

Bagnaia finished as the runner-up in the Sprint race behind Bezzecchi but a change to his Ducati in morning warm-up made all the difference for the main 26-lap race.

“I was struggling to turn the bike and finally we improved that, and it was helping me a lot to not use the rear too much, so I finished the race with a bit of margin,” he said.

“We have to continue working like this. It wasn’t easy today, this weekend, but three races in a row is quite demanding with this schedule, so we have to maybe improve our preparation because in the second part of the season it will be more tough.

“But I’m quite sure we will not have any problems, but it is always better to improve.”

The championship resumes with the British round at Silverstone from August 4-6 for round nine.