The Ducati Lenovo Team has won the sprint race for the Thai Grand Prix with Enea Bastianini, who dominated the encounter – aboard his Ducati machine – at the Chang International Circuit. Francesco Bagnaia crossed the line in third place.
Bastianini had a good start from second place as he took the lead and immediately pulled away from his opponents in the early stages. Enea did a great job in keeping the rivals at bay throughout the 13-lap race to secure his second win of the season in the Saturday encounter.
After taking pole position and setting the new outright lap record for the track in Q2, Bagnaia lost a couple of positions at the first turn after Martín ran wide in front of him. Pecco stayed in second place in the first half of the race, before being overtaken by the championship leader with seven laps to go. In the final laps, the reigning world champion tried to bridge the gap to his opponent but was unable to find the necessary speed for an overtaking attempt before the chequered flag.
The Ducati Lenovo Team riders will be back in action tomorrow morning at 9:40 local time (GMT +7) for the warmup session, which will be followed by the eighteenth race of the season, getting underway at 14:00.
Enea Bastianini (#23 Ducati Lenovo Team) – 1st
“It was a great race. I took advantage of (Jorge) Martin’s mistake at turn one as I saw he had hit the brakes very late, and I knew he couldn’t make the turn stick. I then tried to pull away a little in the first two-three laps and managed to do so, and from then on things were a lot easier – even though the others were never too far behind for the whole race. In the end we managed to take the win in a much more comfortable way than we expected, even though it’s never easy.”
Francesco Bagnaia (#1 Ducati Lenovo Team) – 3rd
“The early part of the race was good, but then I lost one position and in the end we missed something to try and take a shot at Jorge. We’ll have to analyse the data as I didn’t feel comfortable with the front-end tyre; I was struggling under braking and, generally speaking, to make the best use of it – I had a hard time especially in sector three. The pace, however, was more or less equal to the other frontrunners. In any case we managed to finish third, although we lost two points, and we need to stay focused ahead of tomorrow’s race.”
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