Bagnaia defeats Martin as Marquez charge livens up drab Austrian GP

Reigning MotoGP champion Pecco Bagnaia dominated the Austrian Grand Prix to make himself the sole 2024 points leader again, in a largely processional 28-lap race at the Red Bull Ring.

The Sunday morning fog cleared up well in time for the premier-class grand prix, and though dark skies threatened a rain interruption - after a massive rainstorm had hit the track not long after the Saturday sprint - it never did intervene in the action.

It means Bagnaia now heads Jorge Martin by five points, with nine more grand prix weekends to be run this year.

Unlike on Saturday, Martin fought off Bagnaia at the start despite a marginally better getaway from the latter - but that only meant it too Bagnaia until the end of the opening lap to get past.

And while Martin retook the place for a brief moment with a lunge at Turn 9, Bagnaia was back ahead on corner exit and began to control the race from there.

A top-three breakaway involving the pair and their Ducati GP24 peer Enea Bastianini quickly became a two-rider breakaway when it became clear Bastianini couldn't run the same pace.

And while Martin kept Bagnaia under big pressure for the first 11 laps or so, he then slowed up and dropped to a second off his title rival.

He never stood any real chance of making the ground up from there, eventually finishing 3.2s off.

Bastianini had avoided his opening-lap mistake from Saturday and was up to third right away, but simply didn't have the pace of the two, meaning he never had a real chance to make use of his usual late-race prowess.

After crashing out of an "easy podium" on Saturday, Marc Marquez's chances to make amends with a Sunday top-three finish went out the window at the start.

A tardy start put him on a collision course with the late-braking Franco Morbidelli in the Turn 1 braking zone, and both of them dropped well out of the top 10 as they ran wide after the contact.

Marquez's recovery ride from there included elbowing the rear tyre of Jack Miller's KTM when he went in too hot into the Turn 2 chicane, then having Miller go down right in front of him at the same part of the track a lap later.

It released Marquez to go chase after Marco Bezzecchi and Brad Binder, and he eventually cleared both, taking care of Bezzecchi with an aggressive divebomb into Turn 2 and then pulling off an audacious move on Binder at the fast Turn 6.

Marquez eventually finished fourth, six seconds down on Bastianini but nearly five up on Binder - who did successfully keep Bezzecchi at bay.

After a woeful Saturday outing, Maverick Vinales defeated Aleix Espargaro in the works Aprilia duel, making up for a failed lunge at Turn 3 early on that cost him position with an inventive Turn 9 overtake late on.

It put Vinales out of reach for the recovering Morbidelli, who did work his way past Espargaro for eighth.

Alex Marquez completed the top 10, followed by KTM's Pol Espargaro and Trackhouse Aprilia's Miguel Oliveira.

Pedro Acosta had perhaps his roughest premier-class grand prix yet, bringing it home in 13th, while LCR Honda's Takaaki Nakagami - the best of the Japanese manufacturers' riders - beat Acosta's Tech3 team-mate Augusto Fernandez to 14th on the final lap.

Raul Fernandez, who ran right with Trackhouse team-mate Oliveira early on, faded during the race and retired in the closing laps. The only other retirement was Honda's Luca Marini, who pulled up early on for a yet-undisclosed reason.