Italian Andrea Dovizioso fended off Honda’s MotoGP champion Marc Marquez at the last corner to win a dramatic season opening Qatar Grand Prix for Ducati. Dovizioso, who also battled Marquez down to the line a year ago under the Losail circuit floodlights, beat his Spanish rival by a mere 0.023 seconds.
Britain's Cal Crutchlow finished third for LCR Honda, a step up from last year's fourth, after Suzuki's Alex Rins made a late mistake and opened the door to the podium. Italian veteran Valentino Rossi, now 40 years old, completed the top five -- just 0.6 adrift of Dovizioso -- after starting 14th for Yamaha. Marquez seemed to be very pleased with his second-place finish at the Qatar MotoGP as this is a track where the team has traditionally underperformed. He has only won here once before - in 2014, the season where he won ten straight races.
2019 fast seems to be the season of great comebacks (a doff of the hat to Robert Kubica at the Williams F1 Team) as Cal Crutchlow grabbed third. Crutchlow, who is the second oldest rider on the grid, had been out injured with a busted ankle since the 2018 Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix (October).
An unexpected hero on the racetrack was superstar Rossi, who started a lowly P14 but managed to work his way up to P5 — with the possibility of a podium seeming ever so close. Rookie Joan Mir also had a great result for Suzuki, keeping pace with the lead group and eventually finishing in eighth place. In fact, the ‘Rookie of the Year’ title is fascinating this year with four supremely talented rookies — Mir, Quartararo, Francesco Bagnaia and Miguel Oliveira making their presence felt.
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