On the second lap, Jorge shot Dovizioso, Vinales and Rossi in one fell swoop, favoring Marc’s escape, which is now at + 37 on the Ducati rider. Quartararo hits the first podium in MotoGP, Petrucci the third consecutive.
In the last few weeks Marc Marquez has had a lot of bickering with Jorge Lorenzo, but today he is perhaps one of the few who will have nothing to say to the Mallorcan, because his team-mate served him on a silver platter the victory of the Catalonian GP after barely even two laps.
For the first time since running for Honda, the Majorcan had managed to fit into the positions that matter, but he ruined everything with a senseless maneuver: when Marquez attacked Dovizioso at turn 10, blowing the leadership he had earned with a great start, Jorge tried to slip into him even though he was fourth and the consequences were absolutely disastrous.
On his RC213V the front was closed and an incredible carom was triggered: the Honda rammed Dovizioso’s Ducati first, then went on to hit Maverick Vinales’ Yamaha and finally Valentino Rossi’s, which in turn were in battle for top positions.
Lorenzo immediately apologized to the microphones of televisions around the world, but the fact remains that in one fell swoop, therefore, he eliminated practically all the top riders and all this confusion has also allowed Marquez to find himself alone in command with a large margin on the pursuers, flying towards the fourth victory of the season and towards +37 in the World Championship against an innocent Dovizioso.
If nothing else, behind him the battle was very heated for the podium positions between Fabio Quartararo, Danilo Petrucci and Alex Rins. Until a few laps from the end, it seemed the Ducati driver and the Suzuki rider were the most accredited to go alongside the 93 number on the podium, but in the end it was the Yamaha Petronas Frenchman who managed to win his first top 3 in the premier class, despite having returned from an arm operation to solve a compartment syndrome problem.
The rookie was favored by the close battle between the other two, which resulted in a first fairing at turn 5 and then, at 7 laps from the end, in a crossing of trajectories at turn 1 that brought Rins very close to the fall and to lose several positions. It was precisely at this juncture that Quartararo found the right passage to enter “Petrux” at curve 4, which however can be satisfied for the third consecutive podium, which consolidates its excellent moment of form on the official Ducati.
Rins finally remounted up to fourth place and in this way he took just 2 points from second place in the World Championship occupied by Dovizioso. But beware also of Petrucci, because in turn it is just 3 lengths further back. The problem, if anything, is the enormous margin Marquez has built, which risks weighing on the continuation of the season like a rock.
To top off the top 5 there is the Ducati Pramac of a Jack Miller back from the 14th place on the grid, which preceded the Suzuki of Joan Mir and the KTM of Pol Espargaro. But it must be said that today we are talking about a race that was concluded by just 13 drivers and that unfortunately there are also Pecco Bagnaia and Franco Morbidelli, who fell respectively at turn 5 and at curve 7, among those who ended up in the air.
Andrea Iannone, the 11th and only Aprilia driver to have reached the finish line, saw the checkered flag. The other two RS-GPs, unfortunately, collided with each other during the first lap and it was Aleix Espargaro, who was centered right in the knee by Bradley Smith. The Spaniard seemed immediately very painful and in fact he was taken to the hospital in Barcelona for tests, even if the first tests would have excluded fractures.
