Bagnaia wins as Quartararo clashes with Espargaro at Assen

Coming into the Assen weekend 91 points behind Quartararo after two successive DNFs, Bagnaia’s title hopes were boosted by an early crash for Quartararo that also forced Aleix Espargaro off track.

Taking Ducati’s first Assen win since 2008, Bagnaia’s lights-to-flag victory from pole puts him 66 points behind Quartararo going into the summer break.

Poleman Bagnaia got the jump on the field off the line to take the holeshot into Turn 1 as Quartararo ran wide, allowing Aleix Espargaro and Jorge Martin through.

Quartararo recovered third from Martin immediately at Turn 3 and scythed through on Espargaro into Turn 5.

But Espargaro retaliated into the fast Turn 6 right-hander to take second back from the championship leader as Bagnaia’s lead stretched to close to a second over the first tour.

Quartararo shadowed Espargaro for the next three laps before launching his raid on the Aprilia rider into Turn 5 on the fifth tour.

But the Yamaha rider crashed as he attempted the overtake and clattered into Espargaro, forcing the Spaniard into the gravel.

Quartararo re-joined the race at the back of the pack on his damaged Yamaha and pulled into pitlane at the end of lap nine before returning to the circuit.

But his day would soon go from bad to worse as he suffered a nasty highside exiting Turn 5 on lap 13, marking his first race retirement since Valencia 2020.

The Quartararo/Espargaro incident will be investigated after the race, while it allowed Bagnaia to move 1.4s clear of VR46 Ducati rookie Marco Bezzecchi, who elected to run the soft rear tyre instead of the hard that Bagnaia selected.

Bagnaia’s lead would come under a second over the ensuing laps and remained fairly stable as Pramac’s Jorge Martin unsuccessfully tried to pressure Bezzecchi ahead into a mistake.

The podium battle took on a new twist on lap 17 when light rain began to fall on the back half of the Assen circuit, which prompted Martin’s pace to drop off as Aprilia’s Maverick Vinales came through to third through the fast Turn 15 left-hander at the end of the lap.

Ducati’s Jack Miller – who served a long lap penalty on the fourth tour for blocking Vinales in qualifying – and KTM’s Brad Binder, experts in iffy conditions, further demoted Martin on lap 17 and 18 as they pushed for the final podium spot.

The brief rain shower cleared up across the…