After one of his strongest weekends in the last years, Dani Pedrosa takes an excellent win in Jerez on a race on which he hadn’t had rivals. Márquez has finished second with Lorenzo third.
Race began and both Repsol Honda riders kept first and second position. Andrea Iannone moved from fifth on the grid to third. Johann Zarco and Valentino Rossi fought for sixth place but the French rider won the battle. Zarco kept progressing and overtook Maverick Viñales, Cal Crutchlow and Iannone in only one lap and was in third place.
Dani Pedrosa opened a one-second gap with Marc Márquez. On lap 3, Jorge Lorenzo passed Rossi for seventh place and Crutchlow overtook Iannone for fourth position. Lorenzo extended his momentum and moved up to sixth place after overtaking Viñales. On fourth lap, Zarco overtooke Márquez and tried to catch Pedrosa, but Márquez recovered his place.
On the next lap, Iannone and Viñales lost their places to Lorenzo, Rossi and Andrea Dovizioso. Behind them, Jack Miller and Álvaro Bautista crashed and the Australian rider pushed the Spaniard. Right after that, Crutchlow and Pol Espargaró had separated incidents on the same corner. Iannone lost eight position to Danilo Petrucci. Pedrosa was still leading ahead of Márquez, Zarco, Lorenzo, Rossi and Dovizioso. On lap 10, Tito Rabat crashed and Iannone also crashed on the next lap.
The first two positions were now consolidated, but behind, Rossi ran wide and lost his fifth place to Dovizioso and Lorenzo overtook Zarco for third. Two laps later, Viñales moved form seventh to fifth by overtaking Rossi and Dovizioso. Petrucci also joined this battle and overtook Rossi, who was having a difficult race.
With 10 laps to go, Márquez was closing the gap to Pedrosa and Viñales lost fifth place to Dovizioso after running wide. Rossi kept losing pace and was surpassed by Jonas Folger and Aleix Espargaró.
In the final stages of the race, all positions were locked (Márquez didn’t manage to catch Pedrosa) and Pedrosa won his first race of the year and the first one since Misano ’16. He has now won at least one race per year since he debuted in MotoGP in 2006. Second place for Márquez and third for Lorenzo, who gets his first podium finish since he joined Ducati. Awful race for the Movistar Yamaha Team, with Viñales 6th and Rossi 10th.
Despite the bad results today, Rossi still leads the championship with 62 points, followed by Viñales with 60, Márquez with 58 and Pedrosa with 52. Spanish GP is now over, and MotoGP championship will be back in two weeks in Le Mans circuit, which holds the French GP.