MotoGP Valencia Results, Grand Prix - The crowning moment

MotoGP's intense 2023 title fight comes to an end this weekend in Valencia, with Francesco Bagnaia leading Jorge Martin by 21 points ahead of the weekend. This page will be updated with MotoGP Valencia results throughout the weekend.

Overview

Grand Prix - Bagnaia takes all with hard-fought Valencia victory

Sprint - Martin takes crucial win, Bagnaia fifth

Qualifying - Vinales on pole as Bagnaia heads Martin in title battle

Grand Prix

Jorge Martin and Francesco Bagnaia came into the Valencia Grand Prix separated by 14 points, but they ended it 39 points apart, and in favour of Bagnaia, who became the first Ducati rider to defend the MotoGP World Championship with victory in Valencia.

The race effectively started on Sunday morning. Moto2 and Moto3 warm up sessions have been scrapped in 2023 to make room for the fan parade with the MotoGP riders, but Maverick Vinales and Aprilia were thankful on Sunday morning in Valencia that MotoGP still has a 10-minute warm-up session to start the day, as the #12 RS-GP blew its motor. Vinales, instead of pulling off-track when he saw the black and orange flag denoting a technical problem, rode his bike back to the pits. That was a breach of the rules, which say that you must pull off-track as soon as possible, and this breach handed Vinales a three-place grid penalty for the race. For Vinales, it meant starting the GP from fourth instead of pole, which was assumed by Francesco Bagnaia. Jack Miller was promoted from the head of the second row to the back of the first row, while Johann Zarco started from second place.

Starting from pole, the best thing Bagnaia could do was replicate his start from the Sprint, in which he made the holeshot. This is exactly what Bagnaia did, making the start ahead of Brad Binder, while Jorge Martin slotted into third place. 

Martin passed Binder into turn two, and now looked directly at his title rival, Bagnaia, who had made a more assured start to the Grand Prix than he had in the Sprint.

Bagnaia led the opening lap with Martin close in-tow, but a mistake from the reigning champion at the final corner seemed to open the door to Martin at the beginning of lap three. He was unable to out-brake Bagnaia, and nearly clipped the #1’s rear. Martin managed to pull out of the move, but he sent himself to the turn one run-off, and down to eighth place.

Bagnaia now led Brad Binder by half-a-second, and the KTM man set the fastest lap of the race on lap three.

By lap five, Martin was beginning to make his way through and back to the front, but his charge forwards was halted on the following lap, when he made contact with Marc Marquez while trying to pass him at turn four. The contact launched Marquez, and saw him having to be helped away from the track; but for Martin the crash was the end of his championship bid.

Bagnaia was immediately informed by the factory Ducati team of Martin’s retirement from the race, and the two KTMs behind him were soon in front of him. 

Binder was past Bagnaia much earlier than his teammate, Miller, and they were separated by around one second once they were both clear in first and second.

Binder had been frustrated when he had failed to win the Valencia race in 2022, which made last season the first since 2015 that he had not won a race. Although he won the Jerez Sprint, Binder is without a Grand Prix win this year, and Valencia seemed to be a golden ticket for him to take a Sunday win. But then he made things more difficult for himself by locking the front tyre at turn 10 and running off at turn 11.

That put Miller in the lead by 1.2 seconds, but he then crashed at turn 11. 

Binder was on the charge following his mistake, but that charge put him in the side of Alex Marquez, for which the #33 got a ‘drop one position penalty’, which he served after making a further overtake on Maverick Vinales. Having re-passed Vinales, and after Miller’s crash, Binder was now third, and closing back in on the leading pair of Bagnaia and Zarco, and dragging Fabio Di Giannantonio up to the front with him.

Di Giannantonio had had enough of being towed up by Binder on lap 23, and he passed him a turn 11, and set on after the leaders himself.

The #49’s  pace was electric - he was lapping in the 1:30s when the rest were in the 1:31s. With three laps to go, the race was between the three Ducati riders: Bagnaia, Zarco, and Di Giannantonio.

Di Giannantonio passed Zarco for second at turn four on the penultimate lap, and had 0.4 seconds ahead of him before the factory Desmosedici of Bagnaia.

The Gresini rider was able to catch Bagnaia on the last lap, but was never able to be close enough in the right areas to launch an attack and, unlike one week ago in Qatar, it was Bagnaia who came out on top of this battle to take the title with the win.

Di Giannantonio held onto second place, which would have been remarkable a week ago, but is almost expected now. His inability to pass Bagnaia means that, for the first time since the first year of the Motorcycle World Championship in 1949, there have been no repeated Grand prix winners in the premier class in 2023.

Johann Zarco concluded his Ducati career with a third place, as a minor consolation to the Pramac team who saw their riders' title hopes dashed before a third of the race had been completed. It was nonetheless a successful season for the Italian team, who became the first Independent team to win the overall Teams' World Championship.

Fourth place went to Brad Binder, who undoubtedly blew a chance at victory with his turn 10/11 mistake. He was the sole surviving KTM, as both Jack Miller and Augusto Fernandez crashed out, and Pol Espargaro crashed but remounted to finish 14th.

Raul Fernandez had a solid ride to finish a career best fifth and as top Aprilia in Valencia, amid instability in the RNF Racing team which confirmed this weekend that Team Principal Razlan Razali is leaving the team.

Alex Marquez concluded his first season in the blue of Gresini Ducati in sixth place. The feeling is that the arrival of another Marquez in 2024 will take Gresini right to the top.

Franco Morbidelli had a strong end to his Yamaha career with seventh place, finishing four places ahead of Fabio Quartararo, who was 11th coming down with a 40-degree fever overnight.

The injured Aleix Espargaro salvaged an eighth place from his weekend, ahead of Luca Marini (9th on his last weekend with the VR46 team, and still unable to say he will ride for Repsol Honda next year), while Maverick Vinales rounded out the top 10 after running out of grip with his soft rear tyre.

After the race, Fabio Di Giannantonio and Brad Binder were given sanctions for breaching front tyre pressure rules. For Binder, it was his first offence, and so he was only given a warning, but Di Giannantonio hd already been warned in the Valencia Sprint, so was penalised by the addition of three seconds to his race time. That meant that Binder was promoted to the podium in third place, Zarco to second, and Di Giannantonio was demoted to fourth.

Full MotoGP results from the season-ending Valencia Grand Prix, updated post-tyre pressure penalties, are below.

2023 MotoGP Valencia Results | Grand Prix

Sprint

Maverick Vinales started from pole position in one of the most important Sprints of the season, which saw Jorge Martin win to extend the championship fight on and into Sunday’s Valencia Grand Prix.

It was Francesco Bagnaia who had the advantage from the grid, starting from second place and taking an emphatic holeshot. He lost the lead, though, to Maverick Vinales at turn two, while Jorge Martin was now up to third place, and immediately applied pressure to his rival.

A pass from Martin at turn 11 allowed Brad Binder and Marc Marquez up into second and third places, respectively, demoting Bagnaia to fifth, while Martin was now fourth.

Martin continued his charge on lap two, passing Marquez at turn four, and immediately setting his sights on Binder’s second place.

By lap five, Bagnaia’s lack of early pace was evident. He was losing as much as 0.3 seconds per lap to the four ahead of him, who were all together in an eight-wheeled battle for the win.

That battle really ignited on lap six, when Binder made his first attempt at passing for the lead, only to be rebuffed by Vinales. 

One lap later, Binder was successful, and demoted the Aprilia rider to second. It seemed like a matter of time before Martin found his way past Vinales, and indeed it was, as the #89 passed for the lead at turn one on lap eight.

Marc Marquez found more difficulty getting past Vinales, who seemed to now be struggling with his medium-compound rear tyre compared to the soft-compounds around him. A lap behind Vinales allowed a 0.7-second gap to emerge to the leaders, which now had Binder behind Martin, who had taken the lead at turn 11 to the audible delight of much of the Valencian crowd.

Martin had five laps to hold on to his lead, while behind Bagnaia had five laps to endure the pressure of Fabio Di Giannantonio. 

Martin led by 0.8 seconds onto the final lap, as he cruised to a ninth Sprint win of the season ahead of Brad Binder (2nd, top KTM) and Marc Marquez (3rd, top Honda), who completed the podium.

Maverick Vinales was relatively distant in the end in fourth place, while Bagnaia was just able to hold on from Di Giannantonio to an important fifth place. A repeat result for Bagnaia tomorrow will seal him the title regardless of what Martin does.

Di Giannantonio had plenty of opportunities to throw a wheel at Bagnaia, but he had seen Fabio Quartararo crash out earlier in the race when he overtook the #1 at turn six. The #49 remains without a contract for 2024, and his most likely option is with the VR46 Ducati team. Taking out the Bologna brand’s factory rider would probably have a negative impact on his employment prospects for next year, and so no risks were taken.

Marco Bezzecchi was close behind Di Giannantonio in seventh place, ahead of the second Gresini Ducati of Alex Marquez in eighth. Johann Zarco (9th) and Augusto Fernandez (10th) rounded out the top 10.

Full MotoGP results from the Valencia Sprint are below.

2023 MotoGP Valencia Results | Sprint

Qualifying

Once again, the pressure was on for the MotoGP title contenders in Valencia, and especially for Francesco Bagnaia, but it was he of the two title contenders who managed the pressure best. Outside of the title battle, it was Maverick Vinales who took pole position.

Q1 began the intensity. Francesco Bagnaia had essentially the most important 15 minutes of his season, and he started it well by going fastest. But, on the second lap of the first tyre, he was pushed to second by Alex Marquez, and Augusto Fernandez was only 0.007 slower than Bagnaia.

Bagnaia responded in his second run, setting a new lap record with a 1:29.054 to top the session, and he was joined in advancing to Q2 by Marquez.

Q2 saw the lap record fall again, but perhaps not to the rider it would be expected to go to. Jorge Martin's Q2 was a relative disaster, and he only managed sixth place after more or less failing to set something representative on his second run. Taking up the mantle of challenging Bagnaia's new lap record in Martin's place was Maverick Vinales, who set the first 1:28 on a MotoGP bike with a 1:28.931 to take pole position, and Aprilia's first since Aleix Espargaro's in Jerez.

In contrast to Martin's Q2 struggles, Bagnaia qualified second. He started the session with the used tyre from Q1, and only did one lap on it. That meant he was out of sync with the rest of the field, and started the first lap of his second run as the rest were coming out of the pits for theirs. This was a strategy that worked for the factory Ducati rider, as he rode totally alone, and was briefly fastest before Vinales' lap record. Bagnaia will start second for this weekend's two races.

Johann Zarco's final lap was good enough to put him third on the grid, which means that all eight full-time Ducati riders have qualified on the front row at least once this year.

Jack Miller was fourth, and the fastest KTM, ahead of Brad Binder in fifth, despite a late, heavy crash at turn eight. The aforementioned Jorge Martin was sixth; while Marco Bezzecchi (7th) heads up row three from Alex Marquez (8th) and Marc Marquez (9th, top Honda, top Japanese bike). Raul Fernandez rounded out the top 10, ahead of Fabio Di Giannantonio (11th) and Aleix Espargaro (12th).

Joan Mir did not set a time in qualifying, having pulled out of the weekend following his heavy turn eight crash on Friday.

Full MotoGP results from qualifying in Valencia are below.

2023 MotoGP Valencia Results | Qualifying