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The gap at the top of the MotoGP World Championship standings has been reduced once again, as Jorge Martin returned to the top step of the podium after mishaps in the Grands Prix at Indonesia and Australia. Francesco Bagnaia struggled and only finished seventh.
MotoGP Thailand 2023 Sprint: How the race unfolded
Jorge Martin started from pole position and kept his lead, as he set about pulling away from the first lap, while Luca Marini and Aleix Espargaro kept second and third positions behind him. On the second one though, Brad Binder took third position away from the Aprilia rider. The first lap ended with the first crash of the race, Takaaki Nakagami.
Binder set his sights on Marini, but he couldn’t make the move stick on the first few laps, as the Italian defended brilliantly on the brakes. In the meantime, Bagnaia lurked towards the bottom of the top ten, losing three places after starting sixth. He regained two though, when Alex Marquez and Johann Zarco lost time in their own battle.
👏 @PeccoBagnaia gets a two-for-one!
He takes advantage of battling ahead! He’s up to 7th now! 📈#ThaiGP 🇹🇭 pic.twitter.com/lRPiXEY7XG
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) October 28, 2023
Binder finally made his move for second on the seventh lap, but he was already a second and a half behind Martin. The South African did not pull away from those behind him though, with Marini and Aleix Espargaro on his tail, but no attack was made by either rider.
The race at the front pretty much stabilised until the last lap, when the Spaniard made an error on the last lap and he lost a place to Marc Marquez, as the Honda rider had overtaken Marco Bezzecchi just a couple of laps earlier.
MotoGP Thailand 2023 Sprint: The results
For the fifth consecutive Sprint, Jorge Martin emerged as the winner and he did so with ease. The gap may have dropped to one second at the chequered flag, but he led from lights to flag in dominant fashion.
Behind him, Brad Binder finished second, as he did not let Luca Marini launch an attack on him after passing him, despite not pulling away. For Marc Marquez, fourth place will be a success and an unexpectedly good result. Aleix Espargaro was in the fight for the podium for the majority of the race, but his mistake dropped him to fifth.
Marco Bezzecchi was fifth until the last couple of laps, but Marquez overtook him and he had to look backwards as Francesco Bagnaia was approaching him. The championship leader did have the time to make a move though, and he finished in a lowly seventh. As a result, the gap at the top of the standings is down to eighteen points.
Behind him, Alex Marquez finished eighth and the last point went to the winner of the Australian GP, Johann Zarco, in front of Jack Miller and Fabio Quartararo.
The other Gresini bike, of Fabio Di Giannantonio, had to be retired because of suspected clutch issues. The other rider who did not see the chequered flag was Augusto Fernandez, who crashed in the halfway stage of the race at the last corner, the same as Nakagami.
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