The last race of the day in the Argentina GP has been an impressive and unpredictable show in which there have been plenty of crashes and Maverick Viñales has won a race that makes it more leader of the championship.
The red lights turned off and Marc Márquez was able to keep the lead and start pushing. Behind him, Karel Abraham quickly started to lose places and Cal Crutchlow moved to second place. Both Movistar Yamaha drivers had difficult starts, but they were running third and fourth before the end of the first lap, being Maverick Viñales ahead of Valentino Rossi. Jorge Lorenzo had a crash in turn 4, apparently after a contact with Andrea Iannone, and retired.
In lap four, it was announced that Iannone had jumped the start and was penalised with a ride through. At the same time, Márquez fell while he was leading and retired, leaving Viñales, who had already overtaken Crutchlow, on the lead. Viñales was being the fastest rider and created a small gap between him and Crutchlow and Rossi, but he didn’t manage to get away from them at all.
Behind them, there was a fight for fourth position between Danilo Petrucci, Dani Pedrosa and Johann Zarco. A few laps later, Álvaro Bautista joined this group and started pushing Zarco. Álex Rins became the third crashed and retired rider.
At lap 11, nothing had changed, but Viñales had already more than a one-second gap to Crutchlow, who was being put under pressure by Rossi. At the second group, Zarco overtook Petrucci and Pedrosa and moved up to fourth. Sam Lowes went into the pit lane and retired with mechanical issues.
Three laps later, Pedrosa, who had recovered fourth place, crashed at the same corner that his teammate and became the fifth retired rider. One lap later, there was a multiple crash between Andrea Dovizioso and Aleix Espargaró, who was completing another great performance with his Aprilia. There were only 16 drivers remaining on track and both KTM’s were in position to score points.
On lap 19, Rossi finally managed to overtake Crutchlow and move to second place. But the Italian rider was unable to catch his teammate and Viñales won the Argentina GP, his second win on his second race with Yamaha. Rossi and Crutchlow followed Maverick on the podium. Bautista has finished on an impressive fourth place and both KTM’s have been able to score their first points (14th place for Pol Espargaró and 15th for Bradley Smith).
With this win, Viñales extends his championship lead with 50 points, followed by his teammate Rossi with 36 and Dovizioso with 20. After that, Argentina GP is now over and MotoGP will be back in two weeks with the Americas GP, in Austin (21st-23rd of April).
