Argentina MotoGP Sprint: Marc Marquez dominates from pole to victory

The dream team of Marc Marquez and Ducati continued to steamroll the competition as they won back-to-back Sprint Races . Sticking to the script as in the previous grand prix, younger brother Alex Marquez took runners-up podium and teammate Francesco Bagnaia claimed third place. Is this going to be the default podium order all season? Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves—it’s only the second race. 

Argentina MotoGP Sprint: Marquez brothers shadow dancing

Marc Marquez had the perfect start and maintained his lead while keeping his brother at bay. There were moments like lap 4 when Alex was a whisker 0.2 seconds off Marc, but he never managed to come close to overtaking the Ducati rider. A lot of credit goes to Alex for consistently breathing down his brother’s neck on last year’s Ducati GP24. Bad news for the Gresini rider is that his elder brother rode flawlessly and in reality, Alex was second best throughout the Sprint Race.

Things were a bit different for Bagnaia as he didn’t have the pace to put any pressure on Alex Marquez and at times looked marooned in third place. Things started getting interesting for the two-time MotoGP world champion as KTM’s Pedro Acosta and Honda LCR’s Johann Zarco decided to attack him for third place. Pecco remained ice cool as always and refused to give an inch as he bagged second runners-up spot. 

Argentina MotoGP Sprint: Battle for fourth place

Zarco started in the front row from third place but didn’t have the smooth start that he would have liked. He fell back a couple of places, but the Frenchman continued to clock quick laps, which helped him to finish fourth. Zarco tried to make up the lost gap between him and Bagnaia, but It was all in vain. There was a moment where things could have heated up between Zarco, Fabio Di Giannantonio of VR46 and Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi, but they had to contend for a fifth and sixth place respectively. 

Franco Morbidelli escaped a scare when KTM’s Brad Binder made contact with him, the VR46 rider kept his bike in control and finished seventh ahead of Joan Mir of Honda, Acosta, who had a see-saw outing and Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo.