Marc Marquez wins first GP on Ducati; his brother takes Bagnaia out

Six-time MotoGP champion Marc Marquez dominated the 2024 Aragon Grand Prix for his first full-distance premier-class win in almost three years.

But Marquez's long-awaited win was partly overshadowed by a potentially title-race altering collision between reigning champion Pecco Bagnaia and Marquez's brother Alex in the fight for the final spot on the podium.

The elder Marquez had entered the race as an overwhelming favourite, having run riot in the variable-grip conditions at a resurfaced Motorland Aragon.

The rain had washed out all the built-up grip between Friday and Saturday to enable him to dominate the sprint, and it sprinkled the track again ahead of Sunday's action.

So when Marquez converted his pole position into the lead into Turn 1 on Sunday, it was always going to be a tall order for him to be dethroned.

Jorge Martin - now the championship leader - gave it a real go, though, although he faced an early deficit through needing to clear rookie Pedro Acosta in second.

A lunge on Acosta into the 'reverse Corkscrew' ran them both out wide, costing them precious time relative to Marquez, and though Martin did clear Acosta by the end of the lap Marquez was already two seconds clear.

Martin managed to keep the gap largely stable in the only going, though eventually had to accept defeat - clearly content to bring it home in second with no threat behind.

It was a second that will have been made all the more sweeter by the events of the 18th lap.

Bagnaia's title blow

Like on Saturday, Bagnaia had a very difficult time getting off the line on the dirtier side of the grid - despite efforts to clean it - and he dropped from third to seventh on the opening lap.

That seventh became sixth when Miguel Oliveira crashed out right ahead of him at the end of the opening lap, but running in traffic after that cost him any chance of getting in a fight with Marquez or Martin.

Instead, as Alex Marquez cleared Acosta and had a mini-breakaway of his own with the latter busy fighting off Franco Morbidelli, Bagnaia was biding his time and waiting.

A big Turn 5 error from Morbidelli gave him one place, then he put pressure on Acosta and got him to make a mistake in the penultimate left-hander.

Though the younger Marquez had built up a buffer, Bagnaia had the pace to close it down, but overtaking was a different matter.

Opportunity did come, however, when the Gresini rider overcooked his entry into Turn 12, but as Bagnaia then tried to swoop around the outside of Turn 13, Marquez refused to back out of the corner - and they tangled, Bagnaia getting briefly crunched up beneath the weight of his rival and his rival's bike.

He was swiftly back on his feet and quickly exited the medical centre after a check-up - but he will leave Aragon 23 points behind Martin in the title race.

The rest of the race 

Though Acosta looked like he would sink like a stone at one point, the rookie instead weathered the pressure from KTM stablemate Brad Binder and held on to what ended up a podium finish in the end, to add to his sprint podium from the day before.

Bagnaia's team-mate Enea Bastianini - 14th on the grid - looked on for a very damaging day at one point, showing good pace but struggling to make inroads as he got caught up with Jack Miller and Fabio Di Giannantonio.

But with attrition up ahead and Bastianini ultimately making progress, he eventually worked his way past the likes of Morbidelli and Marco Bezzecchi too to salvage a fifth place.

Bastianini is now a point back from Marc Marquez, and trails points leader Martin by 71 points.

Morbidelli, Di Giannantonio and Bezzecchi completed the top eight on the road. Di Giannantonio then received a 16-second penalty for a tyre pressure infringement - but only dropped one place, behind his VR46 team-mate Bezzecchi.

Alex Rins picked up ninth place for Yamaha after what his best race of the season so far. Team-mate Fabio Quartararo went down from 12th early on in the race.

KTM's Jack Miller was 10th on the road but was penalised like Di Giannantonio for tyre pressures. However, he dropped from 10th to 15th.

The final spot in the top 10 thus went to Aprilia's Aleix Espargaro - whose team-mate Maverick Vinales parked it in the pits after cruising at the back for a handful of laps.

Takaaki Nakagami was in the end classified 11th as the lead Honda for LCR.