Bagnaia wins San Marino MotoGP after Miller crashes while leading

Francesco Bagnaia has held off Enea Bastianini to win a nail-biting San Marino MotoGP after Jack Miller threw away an early lead.

Just 0.034s separated the top two at the Misano finish line as Bagnaia, who started fifth due to a grid penalty, took a record-breaking fourth straight victory on a Ducati.

With that, he moves into second in the championship, 30 points behind Monster Energy Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo after being 91 off the pace just four races ago.

Rounding out the podium on Italy’s Adriatic coast was Aprilia Racing’s Maverick Viñales, who ran second for much of the race but took the chequered flag four seconds in arrears of Gresini Racing’s Bastianini.

Miller (Ducati Lenovo) completed all 27 laps but finished all the way back in 18th, one position ahead of fellow Australian Remy Gardner (Tech3 KTM).

The result was a stark contrast to how it started for ‘Jackass’, who qualified on pole position for just the second time in his MotoGP career and showed a clean pair of heels when the lights went out.

He was still leading by a slim margin over Ducati stablemate Bastianini when he dropped his own Desmosedici at Rio (Turn 4) on just Lap 2 of the contest, leaving #23 in the lead from Bagnaia (Ducati Lenovo), Viñales, Marco Bezzecchi (Mooney VR46 Ducati), Aleix Espargaro (Aprilia Racing), Luca Marini (Mooney VR46 Ducati), and Quartararo.

Bezzecchi also crashed just six corners later and it was nearly an even bigger disaster for Ducati when Bastianini had a moment at Carro (Turn 14).

Bagnaia passed his future team-mate for the lead at Quercia (Turn 8) on Lap 3, before Viñales made a forceful move for second spot six corners later at Carro.

Espargaro had already ceded fourth position to Marini when he went wide at Turn 13 on Lap 6 and was picked off by Quartararo.

Meanwhile, the top four continued to circulate with less than a second covering all of them, Bagnaia unable to shake Viñales.

Bastianini briefly dropped behind Marini with a mistake at Tramonto (Turn 10) on Lap 16 but quickly recovered the ground he had lost, before Viñales ran wide at Quercia on Lap 18 and lost precious tenths of a second.

At the start of Lap 20, Bastianini went down the inside of Viñales to take over second position, and would soon be latched onto the tail unit of #63.

The margin was still a single tenth as they commenced the final lap but blew out, relatively speaking, to four tenths when Bastianini squirmed under brakes at Rio.

However, that was not the end of it, with the Gresini pilot closing the gap back up and getting a fantastic run off the last corner but falling just short of victory.

Viñales finished 4.212s behind the winner, from Marini, Quartararo, and Espargaro, the latter of whom drops to third in the championship at three points behind Bagnaia.

Rounding out the top 10 on the day were Alex Rins (Suzuki Ecstar), Brad Binder (Red Bull KTM), Jorge Martin (Prima Pramac Ducati), and Alex Marquez (Castrol LCR Honda).

Miguel Oliveira (Red Bull KTM) was 11th and Andrea Dovizioso (WithU RNF Yamaha) got home 12th in his final race as a MotoGP rider, ahead of Raul Fernandez (Tech3 KTM), Stefan Bradl (Repsol Honda), and Takaaki Nakagami (Idemitsu LCR Honda).

Gardner ran as high as 15th but his cause was not helped by a long lap penalty for repeated track limits breaches.

Johann Zarco (Prima Pramac Ducati), Michele Pirro (Aruba.it Ducati), and Pol Espargaro (Repsol Honda) crashed out together at the first corner, with Franco Morbidelli (Monster Energy Yamah) going down later in the race to join them as retirements.

The field stays at Misano for a two-day test from Tuesday before Round 15, the Aragon Grand Prix, at MotorLand Aragon on September 16-18.

Race results: San Marino MotoGP

Race winner: 27 laps

Riders’ championship