Jorge Martin has a chance to wrap up the MotoGP world championship in the Malaysian Grand Prix on Sunday after winning the sprint race at Sepang.
The Pramac Ducati rider’s points advantage over his title rival Francesco Bagnaia has grown from 17 to 29 points after Bagnaia crashed his factory Ducati while chasing Martin on lap three.
Martin will confirm himself as world champion in tomorrow’s grand prix if he can stretch his advantage over Bagnaia by a further nine points.
The Spaniard set up his sprint victory by getting into the lead over polesitter Bagnaia at the first corner, having made a superiorr launch from second on the grid. The two approached and entered the turn side-by-side but Martin, with the inside line, was able to edge clear at the apex.
That put the pressure back onto Bagnaia, whose points deficit meant he could take no other approach than try to overtake Martin during the course of the 10-lap race.
Bagnaia was able to shadow Martin until Turn 9 of the third lap, but then he asked too much of his Ducati in the dirty air and lost the front end.
That left Martin to take what looked like a comfortable win, although Marc Marquez (Gresini Ducati) and Enea Bastiani kept a close eye on him and tested his concentration in the intense Malaysian heat.
“It was a difficult race,” said Martin afterwards. “I had to be super precise and focused. It would have been really easy to make a mistake today.”
Just as Marquez could do nothing about Martin, so factory Ducati rider Bastianini could only shadow Marquez throughout. That allowed the eight-time world champion to grow his points advantage over fourth-placed Bastianini to 13 points.
The better part of five seconds behind the leading trio, Alex Marquez brought his Gresini Ducati machine home fourth after overtaking Pramac’s Franco Morbidelli on the second lap and holding his position from there.
The same lap two wobble that allowed Alex Marquez through also opened the door for Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo to seal what would become fifth place.
Morbidelli settled for sixth in a race that saw small gaps in the lower half of the top 10 but little in the way of overtaking activity.
Behind the Italian came a string of KTMs, with South African Brad Binder the best of them in seventh.
Fellow factory KTM rider Jack Miller held off Tech3 rookie Pedro Acosta for eighth, despite the Spaniard’s finest efforts to repeat his successful late attack on the Australian a week ago in Thailand.
VR46 rider Marco Bezzecchi completed the top 10 ahead of Alex Rins (Yamaha) and Aleix Espargaro (Aprilia).
Luca Marini was the best Honda in 15th after LCR Honda’s Johann Zarco pulled out of the race with a technical failure.
Andrea Iannone finished 19th and second from last on his MotoGP return with VR46.