Francesco Bagnaia wins the Austrian Grand Prix Sprint Race at the Red Bull Ring. Bagnaia dominated the race; winning the race by over 2 seconds. Bagnaia was in a mood today as he came off of a blistering qualifying placing him on Pole for Sunday’s race. He wasn’t finished and the win makes the statement that the reigning champion has not fallen out of form recently. Brad Binder (KTM) continues to impress and improve. Binder has moved up one position each session this weekend. Binder finishes second in the sprint showing the strides KTM have made over the season to drastically reach championship contending pace. There is a long way to go in the season so anything is possible but for now Bagnaia hold reign over the grid.
Jorge Martin who sits 2nd in the MotoGP championship finished third for a good points finish to keep him ahead of Marco Bezzecchi (Mooney VR46 Racing). Bezzecchi did not finish the sprint race and thus score zero points. Rounding out the top 5 was the Gresini Racing Ducati of Alex Marquez in fourth and Alex Miller in fifth. KTM was able to put both bikes in the top 5 again this season. A great result for the KTM side.
After suffering a seemingly season ending injury Espargaro has worked his way towards getting back to racing form. Espargaro finished P6 in the sprint race. His best finish since returning from injury. His Brother Aleix who won the British Grand Prix at Silverstone finished behind Pol in P7 in the Austrian Grand Prix Sprint.
One man who was happy to get back in the points is Marc Marquez. Marquez had the following comments after the sprint, “It was an interesting Sprint, when I tried the new aero yesterday I knew more or less what would happen in the Sprint – and it did happen. So it was good in a way to understand this new aero more. We’ve been working with a lot of different setups over the weekend, but we have a clear idea for what to do tomorrow. We benefitted a lot from the falls of others, we have to be honest. Without this we would have been in 15th position more or less. We keep on working and see what we can achieve in tomorrow’s main race.”
Full Sprint Race Results are Below