2021 Qatar MotoGP | Vinales takes home the W after battling from 8th

Maverick Viñales takes home the first win of the season at the first Qatar MotoGP weekend, after working his way up the pecking order in the race when he fell to 8th place in the first lap. 

The Ducatis showed their raw power off the line, with all four Ducati Desmosedici GP bikes rocketing up to set the pace early on, including rookie rider Jorge Martin who started on the fifth row in 14th place. 

Pecco Bagnaia was quick to run off early on, and at the end of the first lap was looking at a 1-second gap in the face from second-place Zarco. However, despite his best Dovi-esque riding to defend his lead, he ultimately dropped off the pace to finish in third. 

Starting in third on the grid, Maverick Viñales dropped to eighth place and had a lot of work ahead of him to get past teammate Quartararo, as well as the Ducati team, but a superb ride on the Monster Yamaha YZR-M1 had him finish at the top.

Qatar MotoGP | Race Results 

Tyre wear was apparent as a lot of riders began dropping off towards the end of the race, whilst Joan Mir had the Championship winning race pace to get him from 10th to finish in 4th - but he’ll be disappointed to not have finished in 2nd after running wide on the final corner, and was helpless but to watch the Ducati’s of Zarco and Bagnaia sail past him for the podium places.

On the Suzuki, Alex Rins also put in some good work to finish in 6th, but couldn’t best Fabio Quartararo who finished in 5th.

Jack Miller finished in 9th behind the Espargaro bros; Aleix on the Gresini Aprilia RS-GP finishing in 7th, and Pol on the Repsol Honda coming in 8th. Rookie rider Bastianini will be happy with a 10th place finish on his first MotoGP race and earning him rookie of the day, with Bradl and Rossi taking 11th and 12th respectively. 

Valentino Rossi had a difficult ride starting from 4th, nodding to his rear tyre wear in the race as the reason for not keeping the race pace the veteran would like. Rossi said: 

"We expected more for sure, especially after the qualifying yesterday, but in the race I struggled very much because after some laps I had problems with the tyres,

"This also happened on Friday. We tried to do something but unfortunately we didn’t fix the problem. For some reason we stress too much the rear tyre and it looks like the rear tyre starts to lose performance and grip, so after some laps I'm not fast enough."

Full final results from Crash.net.