Dovizioso wins final lap thriller
SPIELBERG: Ducati’s Andrea Dovizioso won the Austrian MotoGP yesterday to close the gap on championship leader Marc Marquez.
Italian Dovizioso pipped five-time world champion Marquez on the final lap for his first race win since the season opener in Qatar in March to move 58 points behind Honda’s Spaniard.
The duo pulled away from the rest of the field and were involved in an engaging scrap at the Red Bull Ring. Honda’s Marquez led going into the final lap, but Dovizioso stayed in touch and was able to bustle past the Honda man on Turn 10, taking a memorable win.
Fabio Quartararo came home in third, with the Yamaha star coming home ahead of teammate Valentino Rossi.
South African Brad Binder celebrated his 24th birthday in style yesterday with success in the Austrian Moto2 Grand Prix.
The KTM rider was all smiles after ending a winless spell stretching back to Australia in October last year.
Binder crossed the line with a 0.330sec advantage over Alex Marquez, who moved on to 181 points at the top of the Moto2 championships standings, a lead of 43 points over Thomas Luthi.
Marquez’s second place on the podium was hard earned.
The brother of MotoGP world champion Marc had started from 11th on the grid but managed to avoid a series of crashes that eliminated Japan’s pole sitter Tetsuta Nagashima, Spain’s Xavi Vierge, Australian Remy Gardner and Italian duo Enea Bastianini and Luca Marini.
The Moto3 race was won by Italian Romano Fenati for Honda.