Marc Marquez rules Aragon GP as Bagnaia crashes out

Marc Marquez won both the sprint and the main race, with Jorge Martin and Pedro Acosta being second and third, respectively, in both races.

1. Jorge Martin finishes 4.789secs behind Marquez
2. Marc Marquez wins sprint and main race

Marquez wins again after nearly three years

Aragon was the most exciting of the boring races this year. Boring because first and second places were never really under contention, with Marc Marquez holding the lead from pole position while Martin was the only other rider even remotely close to his fiery pace throughout the weekend. The excitement came in the form of the fight (and ultimate drama) that sealed the final spot on the podium, but more on that later.

The huge talking point of the weekend is that Marquez is finally back on top, nearly three years after his last race win at the 2021 Emilia Romagna GP. This comes after years of misery, including four arm surgeries that very nearly drove him to the brink of retirement. While he has long been regarded as one of the greatest racers of all time, this accomplishment also marks him as one of the most determined.

Bagnaia struggles during the weekend

Marc Marquez has not been able to quite match the GP24 Ducati’s thus far on his one-year-old machine. The difference this time around came in his ability to deal with challenging conditions on the recently resurfaced Spanish track with low (and widely varying) grip levels through the weekend. His qualifying time was a huge 0.84secs quicker than Martin's. Championship contender Pecco Bagnaia seemed to be particularly struggling with the conditions, but made it count in qualifying with a third place position.

Unfortunately, that put him on the dirty side of the track which led to massive wheelspin off the line in both the sprint and main races. The best Bagnaia could do in the sprint was ninth, but he made an impressive charge in the main race after dropping to seventh at the start. Bagnaia eventually found himself on the tail of Alex Marquez in third and it was only a question of when, not if, he could pass for third. Alex Marquez ran wide on a left-hander and opened the door for Bagnaia, but they collided in the following right turn. It was a scary incident with Marquez’s bike pinning Bagnaia to the asphalt, but thankfully both riders walked away from the incident – a huge testament to modern airbag technology. The crash was judged to be a racing incident with no penalties to either rider.

This left Pedro Acosta to grab third after a superbly defensive ride in the middle part of the race that kept multiple rivals behind him despite them having higher pace. Brad Binder took fourth while Enea Bastianini managed fifth after another poor qualifying that had him start in 14th place. A couple of tyre pressure penalties awarded after the end of the race to Fabio Di Giannantonio and Jack Miller dropped both out of the top ten, and gave Honda their first top 10 finish of the year at the hands of Takaki Nakagami.

2024 MotoGP standings

With Pecco Bagnaia having scored only one point this weekend, Martin extended his championship lead to 23 points. As for Marc Marquez, his perfect weekend run of topping all the practice, qualifying and race sessions moved him back into third overall with 229 points – one point more than Bastianini.

MotoGP now moves to Misano for two back-to-back races on September 6-8 and 20-22.