Bagnaia looked on course to take the sprint victory on Saturday when he crashed out of the lead on the final lap.

Biding his time in the first half of the race, Bagnaia reeled in Pramac’s Martin to overhaul him on lap 19 of 24, before streaking away by 1.740 seconds to score his third grand prix win of the season.

Watch: Pecco bounces back in Barcelona! | 2024 #CatalanGP

It moves him back up to second in the standings, though Martin has still extended his advantage to 39 points after finishing second in the grand prix.

Marquez was one of four riders to gamble with the soft rear tyre in the sweltering conditions and used it to come from 14th on the grid to take third by just 0.052s from Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaro.

Ducati’s Bagnaia grabbed the holeshot from second on the grid from Tech3 GasGas rider Pedro Acosta, KTM’s Brad Binder, Martin and poleman Espargaro.

Acosta, also on the soft rear — along with Jack Miller (KTM), who crashed, and Alex Marquez – launched an attack on Bagnaia’s lead at Turn 10 on the third tour but ran wide and let the Ducati back into the lead.

Miller would crash just seconds later behind the leaders at the same corner, while Martin passed Acosta there for second on the following lap.

Martin then passed Bagnaia at Turn 10 on lap five to take the lead, with Acosta following the Pramac rider through on the sixth tour.

The top two quickly opened up a gap of over a second to Bagnaia, with Martin released into a 1.1s lead when Acosta crashed on lap 11 at Turn 10.

Bagnaia steadily chipped into Martin’s lead over the next few laps, getting it down to seventh tenths at the start of lap 16.

Martin’s lead fell further until Bagnaia lined up a successful attack into Turn 5 – where he crashed in the sprint on Saturday – on lap 19.

Bagnaia eased away from Martin to secure an important victory after his sprint woes, with Martin second.

Marquez’s charge from 14th started with a jump up to 10th on the opening lap, but found himself stuck behind Pramac’s Franco Morbidelli until lap 11.

Once free of Morbidelli, Marquez quickly passed a struggling Binder on lap 12 and got up to fourth ahead of Trackhouse Racing’s Raul Fernandez six tours later.

Espargaro – who won the sprint on Saturday 48 hours after announcing his retirement from MotoGP – couldn’t keep Marquez at bay and fell to his advances on lap 21 at Turn 1.

The Aprilia rider piled the pressure on Gresini’s Marquez over the final lap, but came up just 0.052s short.

Fabio Di Giannantonio was fifth on his VR46 Ducati, with Raul Fernandez sixth ahead of Alex Marquez (Gresini) and Binder. Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo was ninth, with Miguel Oliveira (Trackhouse Racing) 10th.

The final points went to Marco Bezzecchi (VR46), Maverick Vinales (Aprilia), Acosta following his crash, LCR Honda’s Takaaki Nakagami and factory Honda counterpart Joan Mir.

Enea Bastianini crossed the finish line in ninth, but was handed a 32-second time penalty for failing to comply with two long lap penalties and a subsequent ride-through for ignoring his earlier punishments.

This dropped the factory Ducati rider down to 18th.

Tech3’s Augusto Fernandez and Morbidelli joined Miller on the sidelines after crashes at Turn 10.

Set to end a barren run without a sprint win since last year’s Austrian GP, Bagnaia fell off his factory Ducati at Turn 5 on the last lap of 12 while running eight tenths clear of Aprilia’s Espargaro.

Espargaro, who started from pole but got beaten up in the early laps, had recovered to second on lap eight and was promoted to the lead when Bagnaia crashed.

It marks his first sprint win of the season and comes just 48 hours after announcing ahead of his home race that he will retire from racing at the end of the 2024 season.

Marc Marquez came from 14th on the grid to finish second, besting Tech3 GasGas rookie Pedro Acosta on the final lap.

A tough race for championship leader Jorge Martin saw him salvage fourth from seventh on the grid, meaning his points lead has only shrunk by one to 37.

The 12-lap sprint had five riders leading it at various stages, three of whom crashing out while heading the pack.

Bagnaia nailed the launch off the line from second on the grid to take the holeshot at the start, with Acosta moving into second from third-place starter Raul Fernandez (Trackhouse Racing), KTM’s Brad Binder and Espargaro.

Martin moved up to sixth in the opening turns, while Marquez survived Turn 2 contact with KTM’s Jack Miller – which left the Gresini rider missing wings on the left side of his fairing – to sit eighth off the line.

Acosta put a challenge on Bagnaia for the lead on the run to Turn 1 at the start of lap two, though the Ducati rider carved past again at Turn 5.

Acosta repeated that move on lap 3, while Fernandez got opportunistic and scythed underneath Bagnaia at Turn 3, which then allowed Binder to overtake the Italian for third at Turn 4.

Fernandez then threw his 2023-spec Aprilia up the inside of Acosta at Turn 5, an aggressive move that opened the door for Binder to come through into second.

The Trackhouse rider proceeded to dart away from the pack, swelling his lead to eight tenths over Acosta come the end of lap four.

But Fernandez crashed at Turn 10 on the next tour, releasing Acosta into the lead before Binder jumped the Tech3 rider at Turn 1 on lap six.

Binder was breaking away on lap seven when he crashed at Turn 5 while leading, releasing Bagnaia to head the pack after the Ducati rider came out on top in a battle with Acosta on lap six and earlier on the seventh tour.

Bagnaia looked set to hold onto the lead as Espargaro, who moved ahead of Acosta for second on lap eight at Turn 1, couldn’t make any inroads into the Ducati rider.

But, on the final lap, Bagnaia slid off his GP24 at Turn 5, gifting Espargaro a lead of almost nine tenths to ensure victory.

Marquez’s march towards the front having gotten to eighth at the start continued on lap seven when he passed Martin for what was fifth at the time, before outbraking Acosta for third at Turn 1 on the final tour.

That became second when Bagnaia crashed, extending his strong run of Saturday rostrums to four for 2024 so far.

He held Acosta at bay by 0.277s, while Enea Bastianini came from 11th to fifth on the second factory team Ducati.

Fabio Di Giannantonio was seventh on the VR46 Ducati, with Miller, Aprilia’s Maverick Vinales and Marco Bezzecchi (VR46) rounding out the top nine to take the last points.

Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo came just 0.598s from a point in 10th, while Trackhouse Racing’s Miguel Oliveira and LCR Honda’s Johann Zarco crashed out.

MotoGP Catalan GP — Sprint race results:

Barcelona has typically been a strong venue for Yamaha over the years, though the low-grip nature of the circuit has worked against the M1 lately with its traction issues.

Despite this, at one point in second practice it looked like both factory Yamaha riders could secure a direct place in Q2 for Saturday’s qualifying. However, in the end, only Alex Rins was able to break into the top 10 come the conclusion of the second practice in ninth.

Quartararo will face Q1 after being left with no time for a proper time attack at the end of the session, “a mess” he has blamed on a chain change by his Yamaha team taking too long.

“A bit better,” Quartararo, who also suffered a crash early in second practice, said of his feeling on the Yamaha at Barcelona on Friday. “The aero is doing what we expected. It’s a shame it was a mess for the time attack.

Fabio Quartararo, Yamaha Factory Racing

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

“We took so much time to change one thing on the bike and I could do only one lap in the second run with yellow flags, so I could not make the lap.

“But I mean if you check the pace, the pace was pretty good. But missing the Q2 for this reason is not the best, but I think overall the base was a lot better than before.

“[It] was the chain. The length of the chain because we tried a longer swingarm. But the other bike was crashed, but the problem was we stopped way too late because if it was good, it was perfect.

“We stop, change the tyre and go. But it was not great. So, we had to change and we lost 10 minutes there. Unfortunately, it was the worst 10 minutes of the weekend.”

The 2021 world champion also noted that Barcelona is one of several tracks where he is unable this year to gain much on a fresh soft tyre in time attack trim and has no idea why this is the case.

“So, there are a few tracks where I am struggling a lot and we have no idea why,” he said. “I make 1m39.6s on the pace. Why can I not do [more] than 1m39.3s on the time attack?

“This is something I don’t understand because on the pace we were super fast – for us; compared to the others it’s different.

“But I think our pace was really good, but when we put on new tyres we cannot understand, because Alex if you check his pace over one lap, there’s a big difference. But for us no. So, this is something that I try to understand and the team also wants to try to understand.”

New Yamaha aero worth 0.2s per lap, but Barcelona not showing it

Fabio Quartararo, Yamaha Factory Racing

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

A major bike set-up shift for Rins allowed him to make a step forward in form on Friday at Barcelona.

Yamaha also debuted for both riders its newly-homologated aero package that was first tested at Jerez after the Spanish GP, and then refined at a private test at Mugello last week.

Quartararo noted that the new aero was an improvement under braking, while Rins noticed a slight benefit in cornering.

However, Barcelona’s low grip means the benefits of the new aero package are being lessened – according to Rins – and its potential at the Mugello test was at least 0.2s per lap.

“In this track, I don’t think it helps a lot because with the lack of grip the problem is more on the rear than more on the front or the corner speed,” Rins explained.

“For sure it helps, with this fairing I felt I could do a bit more corner speed, the bike held the line. But we had more problems on the rear.

“It was much better in Mugello, maybe 0.2s faster. So, in the end as a rider you want more than 0.2s, but 0.2s per lap is seconds [over a race].”