MotoGP 2020: Danilo Petrucci wins French MotoGP

 A wet race at Le Mans saw Danilo Petrucci take the top spot. He finished 2.1 seconds ahead of Moto2 World Champion Alex Marquez, who delivered a wonderful ride to finish P2 having started from P18 on the grid. The final podium spot was taken by Pol Espargaro (Red Bull KTM Factory Racing), followed by Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team). Championship leader Fabio Quartararo (Petronas Yamaha SRT), Joan Mir (Team Suzuki Ecstar), and Maverick Vinales (Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP) finished P9 and lower.

The race was delayed due to the thick grey clouds over the track and tensions climbed in the time between the sighting lap and the race being declared wet, which made it a completely unfamiliar territory for two top riders – Quartararo and Mir. The riders could come at any time to swap to their dry-weather bikes. Miller and Cal Crutchlow (LCR Honda Castrol) had a lightning start but it was an early end for Valentino Rossi (Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP) as he crashed at Turn 3. The front was soon a Ducati 1-2-3.

Pol Espargaro (Red Bull KTM Factory Racing) was battling with Quartararo and eventually found a way past, with the Frenchman dropping back down the order at a rate of knots. Crutchlow and Bradley Smith maneuvered their way past Quartararo before Miguel Oliveira (Red Bull KTM Tech3) was through at Turn 13. Oliveira and Quartararo were wide though and shooting through was Alex Marquez, the Repsol Honda Team rider producing a stunning first opening few laps in his first wet MotoGP race to get into P8. 

A quick Championship check with 18 laps to go saw Quartararo in P11 and Mir sitting P19, with Maverick Vinales (Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP) and Franco Morbidelli (Petronas Yamaha SRT) also outside the points – a golden opportunity for Dovizioso and Miller, as well as the rest to get themselves right back in the 2020 title hunt.

MotoGP 2020: Fabio Quartararo wins Catalan MotoGP

France’s Fabio Quartararo produced a thrilling and perfect ride to claim a resounding victory at the Catalan MotoGP, his third of the season which sends him top of the World Championships standings. Joan Mir came through to take second and is now eight points behind Quartararo in the standings while Alex Rins completed the podium.

The race began in dramatic fashion with Andrea Dovizioso, who led the title race by a single point from the Frenchman and Maverick Vinales, taken out in the opening lap after tangling with Johann Zarcho.

Quartararo, on a Yamaha, won the opening two races of the season but has struggled since then, failing to reach the podium in the last five races. But the Frenchman, who showed signs of a return to form in the last race at Emilia Romagna when he came fourth, was back to his best in Barcelona.

Starting from pole, alongside the fellow Yamahas of Franco Morbidelli and Valentino Rossi, he set a fierce pace which put the pressure on the field, especially those trying to close him down. One who suffered was Rossi who had taken advantage of a wobble by Morbidelli with 11 laps to go to move into second spot. Two laps later, however, trying to make up ground on the flying Quartararo, the 41-year-old slid into the gravel on turn two, his race over.

Morbidelli, who won in San Marino two races ago, looked good to take second but could not hold off Mir who swept past him with two laps to go. He then lost a place on the podium as Rins, who started down in 13th, put the gloss on an excellent race. Quartararo heads the standings with 108 points, eight clear of Mir.

MotoGP 2020: Miguel Oliveira wins Styria Grand Prix

Oliveira and Tech3 KTM take a shock victory in a 12-lap Styrian MotoGP sprint at the Red Bull Ring, Oliveira sweeping past both the Ducati of Miller and KTM of Espargaro as they fought at the final corner.

Miller held Espargaro at bay for a second, with Mir fourth at the chequered flag ahead of Andrea Dovizioso - the Ducati rider dropping out of podium contention after running wide on the last lap.

Alex Rins was sixth on the Suzuki, while Nakagami's podium hopes faded in the second race and he was seventh in the end, with Brad Binder (KTM), Valentino Rossi on the Yamaha and Tech3's Iker Lecuona completing the top 10.

Danilo Petrucci grabbed 11th on the works team Ducati ahead of Aprilia's Aleix Espargaro, while a struggling Fabio Quartararo on the Petronas SRT Yamaha maintains a slender three-point lead over Dovizioso after finishing 13th.

Johann Zarco came from the pitlane in the first race to score two points with 14th on the Avintia Ducati, with Franco Morbidelli completing the top 15 on the SRT Yamaha.

MotoGP 2020: Brad Binder wins Czech Republic Grand Prix

Brad Binder dominated the Czech Republic Grand Prix at claim a maiden win for him and KTM in MotoGP, while points leaders Fabio Quartararo, Maverick Vinales, and Andrea Dovizioso struggled.

Binder, the 2016 Moto3 champion, was promoted to the factory KTM team for 2020 after Johann Zarco's exit from the squad and eased to the chequered flag for a historic victory in just his third race in the premier class. Poleman Zarco (Avintia Ducati) botched his launch off the line at the start and dropped to sixth, while Franco Morbidelli put his Petronas SRT Yamaha into the lead having been tipped by many pre-races as the favorite for victory.

Morbidelli began to drop pace in the latter stages but held on to claim a maiden MotoGP podium in second. Zarco held third after expertly taking the long lap penalty, keeping the fading Quartararo at bay, but came under massive attack from the charging Suzuki of Alex Rins he began to struggle with rear grip issues.

 

Rins couldn't find a way through, as Zarco pinched his first podium since Malaysia 2018 and the first for Avintia. Rins' fourth came as he continues to recover from a fractured arm suffered at Jerez last month, with Valentino Rossi rising to fifth from 10th as the top factory Yamaha runner.

 

Miguel Oliveira took his best MotoGP result in sixth on the Tech3 KTM, heading Quartararo, Takaaki Nakagami (LCR), Pramac's Jack Miller, and Aprilia's Espargaro. In a woeful day for the factory Ducati team, Dovizioso was 15s from the win in 11th ahead of Danilo Petrucci, while Maverick Vinales plummeted to a mystifying 14th on the second factory Yamaha.

 

Alex Marquez took the last point on the works Honda. Vinales' miserable afternoon means Quartararo extends his championship lead to 17 points over his Yamaha stablemate, with Morbidelli now third after ending Sunday's race as top Yamaha runner.

Malaysia MotoGP 2019: Maverick Vinales storm to dominant victory

Spain Maverick Vinales stormed to a dominant victory in the Malaysian MotoGP as World Marc Marquez fought his way from near the back of the starting grid to finish second. Ducati rider Andrea Dovizioso came in third but there was a disappointment for French rookie Fabio Quartararo, who only managed a lackluster seventh place after starting from pole.

Vinales dominated at the Sepang circuit from the outset, quickly breaking through the pack and taking the lead from the early stages after starting second on the grid. The Monster Energy Yamaha rider steadily extended his lead over the rest of the pack and never looked threatened. Vinales had a lead of about two seconds over Marquez soon after the halfway mark of the 20-lap race, and he finished over three seconds in front.

It was a major boost for Vinales following last week's Australian MotoGP, where he crashed out after leading for much of the race -- and handed victory to compatriot Marquez. The 24-year-old's second victory of the season leaves him in third place in the overall standings, with one race remaining. Marquez, crowned world champion for the sixth time last month, had started in 11th place after a terrifying crash in qualifying which saw him thrown from his bike. But the Repsol Honda rider surged into second place after just a few laps and stayed there until the end of the race. He opened up a big gap with the rest of the pack, finishing two seconds ahead of Dovizioso of Italy.

There was however a tough fight for third place between Dovizioso, who won at Sepang in 2016 and 2017, and nine-time world champion Valentino Rossi. Rossi managed to push past Dovizioso on several occasions, only for the Ducati rider to snatch the lead back and finish the race just ahead of his compatriot. Quartararo had dominated all weekend going into the MotoGP, topping the timesheets in practice and smashing the lap record, before seizing his fifth pole position of the season. But the 20-year-old Petronas Yamaha rider appeared no match for his more experienced rivals in the main race, quickly falling back at the start of the race. The MotoGP in tropical Malaysia has often been disrupted by torrential downpours in previous years but the rain stayed away this year for the whole weekend.

British MotoGP 2019: Alex Rins wins

Alex Rins snatched a dramatic victory on the line on his Suzuki to win the British Grand Prix ahead of MotoGP world champion Marc Marquez. Marquez appeared to have held off the younger Spaniard, only for Rins to produce a spectacular piece of riding for his second win of the season. But Marquez still extended his lead in the Championship to 78 points after second-placed Andrea Dovizioso of Italy suffered a bad crash on the first lap.

Britain's Cal Crutchlow was sixth. Marquez led virtually all the way round and was on course for his seventh win of the season, but he could not shrug off Rins. It looked like the 23-year-old from Barcelona was going to finish agonisingly close until he zoomed past Marquez with the last manoeuvre of the race. Another Spaniard, Maverick Vinales, was third, with MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi a place further back.

It was another disappointment for Marquez, who had begun on pole position, as the same thing happened to him last time out in Austria. But the Honda rider is still 78 points clear of nearest challenger Dovizioso in the riders' standings with only seven races remaining and on course for his sixth world title. Rins climbs to third following his victory, while Crutchlow remains ninth overall after picking up 10 points for finishing sixth.

The Championship fight took a huge turn though when Albert Arenas wiped out Aron Canet, who is second in the standings, in the early stages, allowing Lorenzo Dalla Porta, who was third, to move 14 points clear with a seventh podium of the season.

German MotoGP 2019: Marc Marquez wins

Marc Marquez completes a decade of dominance at the Sachsenring after cruising to a 4.5 second victory at the 2019 HJC Helmets Motorrad Grand Prix Deutschland; the reigning Champion makes it 10 wins in a row in Germany to beat Maverick Vinales and Cal Crutchlow.

Marquez was sluggish off the line and it looked like he would get swallowed up heading into Turn 1 but the number 93 was last of the late brakers to dive back into the lead. Fabio Quartararo (Petronas Yamaha SRT) slipped back from second to sixth at the start as Vinales, Jack Miller (Pramac Racing), Rins and Crutchlow all got past the Frenchman. And then, Quartararo race ended at Turn 3. The rookie went to get back past Ducati Team’s Danilo Petrucci on Lap 2 but the front of his Yamaha washed away from him as the 20-year-old crashed out of a race for the first time this season.

Marquez was in the groove as the seven-time Champion showed exactly why the Sachsenring is his playground. The Repsol Honda man wasn’t powering away at a rapid rate, but a tenth a lap on Laps 8 and 9 saw his lead go up to 1.5, but then the hammer was well and truly down. Lap 10 saw Marquez go 0.4 faster than Rins as the gap rose above the two-second barrier and from then on, there was no stopping the nine-time Sachsenring winner.

The battle for the second and third steps on the podium was on though. Crutchlow was shadowing Vinales who in turn was sitting a second back from Rins, with the gap remaining constant between the trio as we passed the mid-stage of the race. At this point, the battle for fifth place was also hotting up as Ducati Team’s Andrea Dovizioso and Petrucci were going head-to-head with fellow GP19 rider Miller, Joan Mir (Team Suzuki Ecstar), Valentino Rossi (Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP) and Aprilia Racing Team Gresini Aleix Espargaro.

Qatar MotoGP 2019: Andrea Dovizioso wins

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.