Pecco Bagnaia won a red-flagged and restarted Malaysian Grand Prix at Sepang after a blockbuster duel with MotoGP title rival Jorge Martin, who retains a huge advantage in the battle for the 2024 championship.
Bagnaia ultimately defeated his adversary by 3.1 seconds, in what was a slightly shortened 19-lap race after a big accident during the initial start.
Martin leaves Sepang 24 points adrift of Bagnaia, meaning he will need to put up just 14 points total in the relocated finale at Barcelona in two weeks' time to ensure he is champion regardless of what Bagnaia does.
The race-neutralising crash happened at Turn 2, triggered by a chain reaction set off by Alex Marquez being nudged ever slightly so wide by Enea Bastianini at the Turn 1 right-hander.
As Marquez moved back towards the racing line, he collided with Brad Binder, Binder briefly losing control of his KTM and squeezing Fabio Quartararo and Jack Miller to the inside of the left-hander Turn 2.
It meant a severely compromised entry into the corner and ultimately a multi-bike collision, during which Binder was launched into the air and Miller hit Quartararo's rear tyre with his helmet.
Miller looked to be immobile on the ground for several seconds after that and required on-site medical assistance, but was swiftly cleared of any serious injuries and didn't need to spend long in the circuit medical centre.
Like in the sprint, Martin had got a better launch off the line than Bagnaia in that initial grand prix start - but this time Bagnaia defended more aggressively, the pair nearly colliding under braking to Turn 1 before Martin ran out wide, nearly losing second place to team-mate Franco Morbidelli, too.
But he was right behind Bagnaia again over the rest of the lap, until the red flag came out.
Once the race restarted just under half an hour later, Bagnaia blasted off the line, setting up a multi-lap dogfight with Martin in which they swapped positions multiple times on lap one, lap two and lap three.
These position swaps included divebombs into Turn 1, divebombs into Turn 4 and overtakes in the hard braking zones of the last sector.
Finally, Bagnaia - who counted the final sector as a strength all weekend - picked off Martin at the final corner and began to break away.
He build up a small buffer on the fourth lap, then turned it into a considerable advantage on lap five.
All the while, despite their fighting, only Marc Marquez had managed to keep pace with the pair - and as Martin's victory challenge petered out Marquez briefly looked like challenging the Pramac man for second.
But he never got close enough before falling at the final corner on lap seven.
Marquez's crash promoted Bastianini into third, the works Ducati rider having spent the first handful of laps boxed in behind Morbidelli before finally making a move - which was followed by Morbidelli crashing on the next lap.
Bastianini, in any case, simply didn't seem to have the performance to even think about challenging the lead duo.
The podium places were thus settled fairly early on, although Martin very briefly threatened to come back at Bagnaia in the closing laps before going in too hot at Turn 9 and immediately bailing out of his chase, settling for second.
The younger Marquez, a standout at Sepang last year, took fourth place, successfully fending off rookie Pedro Acosta - the best of the non-Ducatis on his GasGas-branded Tech3 KTM.
Neither Miller nor Binder took the restart, Quartararo raced to a superb sixth for Yamaha, followed by his former team-mate Maverick Vinales and his current team-mate Alex Rins.
Rins even briefly challenged Vinales' Aprilia in what was probably his best grand prix as a Yamaha rider so far - but ultimately came home in eighth.
Augusto Fernandez came up just short of picking off Marco Bezzecchi for ninth, but still at least recorded a first top-10 grand prix finish of what has been a wretched sophomore season in MotoGP.
Johann Zarco led the Honda contingent in 11th, finishing 1.6s up on Marc Marquez - who had rejoined the race after his crash.
The returning Andrea Iannone finished 17th, 48 seconds back from the leader, on his MotoGP grand prix comeback.
There were two retirements in the restarted race, both Hondas - Takaaki Nakagami parking up in the pits and Joan Mir crashing.
RESULT
1 Pecco Bagnaia (Ducati)
2 Jorge Martin (Pramac Ducati)
3 Enea Bastianini (Ducati)
4 Alex Marquez (Gresini Ducati)
5 Pedro Acosta (Tech3 GasGas)
6 Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha)
7 Maverick Vinales (Aprilia)
8 Alex Rins (Yamaha)
9 Marco Bezzecchi (VR46 Ducati)
10 Augusto Fernandez (Tech3 GasGas)
11 Johann Zarco (LCR Honda)
12 Marc Marquez (Gresini Ducati)
13 Aleix Espargaro (Aprilia)
14 Franco Morbidelli (Pramac Ducati)
15 Luca Marini (Honda)
16 Raul Fernandez (Trackhouse Aprilia)
17 Andrea Iannone (VR46 Ducati)
18 Lorenzo Savadori (Trackhouse Aprilia)
DNF Taka Nakagami (LCR Honda)
DNF Joan Mir (Honda)
DNS Jack Miller (KTM)
DNS Brad Binder (KTM)
