Alex Marquez held off his elder brother Marc Marquez to take a brilliant MotoGP victory in front of his home crowd at the Catalan Grand Prix.
At the start, Gresini rider Alex Marquez pulled away from pole position and briefly held the advantage, but Marc Marquez outbraked him into Turn 1 to seize the lead on the factory Ducati.
Initially, the older Marquez was doing enough to stay at the front, but his Gresini-mounted brother did not want to sit behind, and reclaimed the lead at the start of lap 4.
Behind, factory KTM rider Pedro Acosta grabbed third place at the start from Fabio Quartararo, with his stablemate Enea Bastianini rising from ninth on the grid to fourth.
The quartet began to pull away from the chasing pack, with Yamaha’s Quartararo falling into the clutches of the Hondas of Johann Zarco and Luca Marini.
While the gap between the Marquez brothers remained under half a second for the next phase of the race, Bastianini started rapidly closing on Acosta and pulled off a brilliant move at Turn 1 on lap 11.
Start action
Photo by: Lluis Gene / AFP via Getty Images
However, Bastianini didn’t have the pace to keep up with his Ducati rivals, turning the final phase of the race into a two-horse phase between Alex and Marc Marquez.
Factory rider Marc Marquez upped the pace on the final laps in a last-gasp bid to snatch victory, but his Gresini rival had the measure of him, stretching the gap to over a second with two laps remaining.
Alex Marquez ultimately held firm, taking the chequered flag by 1.740s to secure his second career victory in the premier class.
Crucially, the result brought Marc Marquez’s championship lead down to 182 points, delaying the latter’s coronation until at least the Indonesian Grand Prix at the end of the month.
Tech3 rider Bastianini claimed a brilliant third place behind the Marquez brothers, clinching his first grand prix podium with KTM.
After losing third place to Bastianini, Acosta suffered a massive drop on his soft rear tyre – the only rider on the grid not to use the medium rear – but was able to hold on to fourth to bag a solid haul of points.
Alex Marquez, Gresini Racing, Marc Marquez, Ducati Team
Photo by: Lluis Gene / AFP via Getty Images
Quartararo made some late progress on the factory Yamaha to claim an excellent fifth place, beating the top Aprilia of Trackhouse rider Ai Ogura.
Two-time MotoGP champion Francesco Bagnaia made a stunning start in Barcelona, storming from 21st on the grid to 12th by the end of the opening lap. He broke into the top 10 after separate crashes for Marco Bezzecchi and Fabio di Giannantonio on the second lap, and continued to gain ground, eventually taking the chequered flag in seventh.
Marini looked on course to claim fifth place on the factory Honda, having inherited the place after Zarco went down on lap 11, but he rapidly tumbled down the order in the final few laps, eventually finishing eighth behind Bagnaia.
Miguel Oliveira was ninth on the Pramac Yamaha, while reigning champion Jorge Martin recovered to 10th on the factory Aprilia.
MotoGP Catalan GP results
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