Raúl Fernández wins the Dutch Sprint Race at Assen, followed by teammate Ai Ogura and VR46 Racing’s Fabio Di Giannantonio. This meant the Trackhouse squad were able to celebrate their first 1-2 at a Sprint Race in the teams history.
Aprilia, as a whole, have shown to be extremely successful this weekend so far with Marco Bezzecchi topping all Practice sessions before Jorge Martín took pole position on Saturday morning.
The Sprint started with four Aprilia bikes in the front positions for the first time with Jorge Martín, Ai Ogura, Marco Bezzecchi and Raúl Fernández. They were then followed by three Ducati bikes of Pecco Bagnaia, Fabio Di Giannantonio and Marc Márquez and Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo completing the provisional positions for points finishes.
The usually unlucky Frenchman had a positive morning as he made it from Q1 to Q2 alongside Joan Mir only 0.044 seconds behind.
Fermín Aldeguer did not start the Sprint race after being declared unfit this morning due to a crash in Practice where he has suffered a fracture in his T7 vertebra. However, we saw Augusto Fernández feature as a wildcard for the factory Yamaha team.
A different kind of race start
It was announced last weekend at the Czech Grand Prix that holeshot devices would be banned from this weekend forward. While most of the riders were able to start with no problems, Bagnaia caught a slight wheelie. However this only dropped him back one position behind Márquez.
Ogura pipped Martín to the first corner but lost this place again very quickly, whilst Fernández managed to beat Bezzecchi to third. Bez then dropped behind Diggia before the end of the first lap.
Fernández stayed close to Martín until he was finally able to overtake the Spaniard at the same time that Diggia overtook Ogura.
Joan Mir crashed his Honda at Turn 4 on the first lap was confirmed OK as he got back to his feet. Martín worryingly started moving backwards into 4th as he lost nearly half a second in his lap. He had to fight to keep ahead of Bezzecchi, all while the Trackhouse team continued to dominate at the front.
More woes for KTM
Pedro Acosta just about managed to keep the bike upright as he ran through the gravel. This ultimately lost him any chance of gaining any point this Saturday as he joined back in 15th position.
Although his KTM had experienced multiple issues today and yesterday, he climbed back to P9 and gained one point towards the championship standings and remains in sixth position.
Unfortunately Lap 6 saw Jack Miller retire due to a technical issue as he rolled his bike back into the pit lane.
Battles all around the front of the field
Both factory Ducati’s continued to battle each other as Bezzecchi remained in front but it took until Lap 7 for Bagnaia to push his way past Márquez.
Martín and Bezzecchi continue to battle as the Italian rode his teammate to the side of the road, however both were quickly given a track limits warning. By Lap 8, the gap between Ogura in P3 and Bezzecchi in P4 sat at 1.359 seconds.
Fernández set his best lap of the Sprint with only five laps to go as he was splitting away from Diggia and Ogura who continued to fight for 2nd place. Ogura made this pass on Turn 16 as Trackhouse Racing headed for their first 1-2 finish.
As Bagnaia passed Márquez, the Spaniard slowly started to drift back towards the Tech3 KTM of Enea Bastianini but he held on until the very end to keep up with 5th and 6th place.
Late race nerves for the viewers
There was no time for Diggia to sit comfortably in third position as Bezzecchi made some great late race pace and cut the initial gap by a second with only three laps to go.
In the end, there was no way past his former teammate, but he managed to create a 4.3 second gap to his teammate in P5.
With two laps to go, Franco Morbidelli crashed out at Turn 4 whilst Ogura set the fastest lap behind his teammate with only a second gap between the two. But it was no match for Fernández who came out victorious.
This is his second Sprint win in the last four rounds this season and closes the gap to Bagnaia in the championship whilst remaining in eighth position.
This also sets Aprilia ten points ahead of Ducati in the Constructors Standings.
Unlucky for Bagnaia
On the last lap, it looked as if Bagnaia made his way onto the green as he attempted to make a move on Martín and exceeded track limits. Although the move was unsuccessful, he received a one place drop and was classified as P7 behind Marc Márquez.
It is all to play for in tomorrow’s Grand Prix, where the gap is now quickly closing in on the championship. There is no room for mistakes as the championship standings could juggle around.
MotoGP continues on Sunday 28th of June at 9:40am local time for the Warm Up and 14:00 local time for the Dutch Grand Prix.
Feature image courtesy of MotoGP.com