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MOTOGP
AP PHOTO/JOAN MONFORT
Ducati’s Peco Banaia won the Solidarity GP Sprint race in Barcelona, Spain ahead of counterpart Enea Bastianini and Pramac Ducati’s Jorge Martin, keeping alive his hopes of a third consecutive world championship at tomorrow’s race MotoGP.
Those hopes are not high, however, as Martin’s 3rd place finish in the Catalunya Sprint race maintains a 19-point lead over Banaia. That means the Spaniard needs just 7 points in tomorrow’s GP to be crowned champion, even if Ducati’s Italian wins.
Banaia didn’t start the Sprint as well as he would have liked, but soon recovered to take the win. Martin had earlier passed Bastianini, moved up to 2nd place and was almost a second behind Banaia, but in the last lap Bastianini managed to “steal” 2nd place from him.
At the start Bastianini made a stunning start from 8th to climb to the top and Banaia found himself behind Martin, but the Ducati Italian soon recovered and passed his Spanish rival for the title.
Peko soon passed his counterpart for the lead, leaving him to battle with Martin for second place. Finally on the 5th lap Martin managed to pass the Italian and begin his pursuit of the leader Banaia – who was over a second ahead of him.
Martin was unable to get close, and towards the end of the race he began to feel the pressure of Bastianini – until the Italian managed to pass him with a clean and elegant move at turn 5. Aleix Espargaro followed in 4th, despite dropping to 8th at the start, ahead of Gresini Ducati’s Alex Marquez and Pramac Ducati’s Franco Morbidelli, who rounded out the top six.
As for Marc Marquez, the six-time world champion finished 7th on Gresini’s Ducati GP23 after contact with Pedro Acosta’s Tech3 GasGas on the first lap – which saw the latter retire.
Tomorrow’s (17/11) MotoGP final to decide this year’s world champion, the Solidarity GP, will start at 15:00.
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