Defending MotoGP champion Francesco Bagnaia avoided a significant injury after his horrific crash at Circuit-de-Catalunya. Starting off at pole, the Ducati order avoided a massive collision at turn one but went down before being driven over. Aleix Espargaro won the race inches ahead of team-mate Maverick Vinales in a historic 1-2 for Aprilia, with Pramac Ducati's Jorge Martin in third.
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Coming back to the incident, the first crash was caused by Ducati’s Enea Bastianini, who crashed near Turn 1 and triggered a collision with Pramac Ducati’s Johann Zarco. Soon the crash took out the Gresini Ducati of Fabio Di Giannantonio and Alex Marquez and the VR46 Ducati of Marco Bezzecchi. Avoiding this massive pile-up Bagnaia zoomed forward until he lost control before being run over by KTM’s Brad Binder, who could do nothing to change his path. The race was immediately red-flagged as Bagnaia received instant medical attention.
Check out the incident here:
Francesco Bagnaia was soon rushed to the nearby Hospital General de Catalunya. It was later revealed that the Ducati rider suffered no major injuries and was ready to participate in the next race. Talking about the crash, Bagnaia talked about being thankful for being extremely lucky. He said, “I had a lot of luck today. I have to be thankful. Sometimes you need to have luck.”
Talking about being high-sided, Bagnaia replied: “I don’t know. I had very low grip on the warm-up lap. And I just took a very big hit. It was not a normal highside. It’s very hard to understand what happened at the moment. For sure, it wasn’t a normal crash. The rear grip that I had in the warm-up lap wasn’t normal. We’ll do everything we can to be in Misano, and to do well,” he said.