Alex Rins Dominates at Philip Island

IN AN EXCITING QUALIFYING session, Jorge Martin (Prima Pramac Racing) snatched pole position from Marc Márquez (Repsol honda team) with a new lap record and francesco Bagnaia (Ducati lenovo team) completed the front row, starting third.

at the beginning of the race, Martin got the holeshot from pole to take the lead of the race. this time out, all the riders were bunched up as in a Moto3 race and were fighting for positions behind Márquez who was in second place. home hero Jack Miller (Ducati lenovo team) started to gain positions on the second lap and moved up into fourth place. trying to keep up with the lead group, fabio quartararo (Monster energy yamaha) made a mistake going into Miller Corner where he ran off the track but managed to stay astride his bike. this cost him a lot of time and he dropped all the way down to P20.

four laps into the race and out of nowhere alex Rins (team suzuki ecstar) was the fastest man on track and had made his way up to P5 after having started P10 on the grid. Just a few laps later, he passed the factory Ducati duo to get into P3. the next dramatic incident saw alex Márquez (lCR honda Castrol) miss his braking point and run into the rear of Miller, which sent both of them into the gravel. Miller is, thus, unfortunately out of the championship hunt. With 17 laps to go, while trying to come back and at least score some points, quartararo suddenly slid out of contention at the southern loop, lowsiding off into the gravel, which was another twist in the tale.

in the end, it all came down to seven riders locked together and exchanging positions while fighting for the top spot: Bagnaia, Rins, Márquez, Marco Bezzecchi (Mooney VR46 Racing team), luca Marini (Mooney VR46 Racing team), Martin, and enea Bastianini (gresini Racing). Bagnaia led them on to the final lap with Rins and Márquez in second and third place respectively. Rins quickly made a move on Bagnaia going into the southern loop for the lead and Márquez was

able to slip through to second as well.

after this, Rins was unstoppable as he charged to the finish-line and claimed victory while holding off Márquez all the time. Bagnaia completed the podium standings in third place. with this, he is the new leader in the championship standings. Bezzecchi finished in fourth place and secured top independent team rider in the race and Rookie of the Year for 2022.

this was one of the best races of the season with action and drama from start to finish. a bit of history was also made at this GP as the top seven riders’ gap at the finish was within a second (0.884 seconds, to be precise). Bagnaia now has a decent 14-point lead over Quartararo and aprilia’s aleix espargaro is now 27 points behind in third.

Alex Rins won one of the closest races of all time while Marc Márquez claimed his 100th premier class podium and Bagnaia secured third to take the championship lead as Quartararo crashed out

Report: Azaman Chothia