Aleix Espargaro snatched victory away from Francesco Bagnaia at the Circuit de Barcelona Catalunya to secure his and Aprilia’s first ever sprint race win by just over two seconds.
A sluggish start from the Spaniard saw him drop from second on the grid to fourth as the field exited Turn 1, though he swiftly found a way past the quick-starting Jorge Martin for third at Turn 4 just moments later.
He then dispatched Aprilia team-mate Maverick Vinales at the start of the second tour before turning his attentions to Bagnaia, who converted pole into the early race leadership.
Espargaro quickly closed down the Italian’s already-slender advantage before heaping on the pressure, his Aprilia’s impressive edge grip and corner exit speed being levelled out by the leading Ducati’s braking and straight-line prowess.
The British Grand Prix victor’s tenacity eventually paid off though as he finally got a good enough run to level Bagnaia into Turn 1 just after half-distance, Espargaro sliding through into the lead.
From then on he was able to fully utilise the speed he possesses, storming off to north of a two second lead in the remaining few laps to take the chequered flag 1.989s clear for his maiden sprint success.
The battle for second meanwhile went down to the wire as Vinales on the sister factory RS-GP desperately searched for a way past Bagnaia, the Spaniard looking every which way on the final couple laps as the advantage of the Aprilia looked to get stronger almost corner by corner as the Ducati’s tyres wore out.
Bagnaia rode an intelligent race though and managed to narrowly hold off his adversary by a slender 0.051s, Vinales forced to make do with completing the rostrum positions.
Brad Binder made a good start to fire up from ninth on the grid to the top five early on, though struggled to do anything about the bikes ahead en-route to fourth, while Martin rounded off the top five having had to recover from a loss of time caused by running wide at Turn 1 early on.
Miguel Oliveira looked set to finish within the top five before Martin relieved him of fifth on the final circulation, thus leaving the RNF Aprilia pilot sixth, while Johann Zarco like his Pramac team-mate managed to snatch seventh from Marco Bezzecchi on the last tour.
Enea Bastianini claimed the final point for ninth just ahead of Alex Marquez, the Gresini Ducati man recovering to tenth after a poor start saw him drop all the way to 14th.
Marc Marquez meanwhile impressed to take 11th for Honda, the six-time premier class champion holding onto a points-paying position for much of the encounter before eventually being shuffled back in the final couple of laps.
Yamaha’s tough day failed to get any better after both Franco Morbidelli and Fabio Quartararo dropped back from their already lowly grid positions to 20th and 21st in the early goings, the former clawing himself back up to 15th by the end while the latter could capture only 18th ahead of LCR Honda duo Iker Lecuona and Takaaki Nakagami, as well as Repsol Honda’s Joan Mir.
Pol Espargaro was the only rider that failed to make the finish after the GasGas pilot ran wide into the gravel at Turn 5 and dropped his RC16, retiring on the spot.
