Sepang (Malaysia), Oct 26 (IANS) After clinching second place in the MotoGP World Championship on Saturday, Alex Marquez backed it up with a commanding victory in the Malaysian Grand Prix on Sunday.

A flawless ride from the #73 saw the Spaniard Marquez (BK8 Gresini Racing MotoGP) beat the impressive Pedro Acosta (Red Bull KTM Factory Racing) by 2.6s, while a late issue for Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati Lenovo Team) handed Joan Mir and Honda HRC Castrol a fantastic P3 at Sepang.

Just as he did in the Sprint, Bagnaia nailed the start and earned the hole-shot, as Acosta fired his way into an early P2. But Marquez attacked his compatriot at Turn 4, and a lap later, the #73 demoted Bagnaia to P2 with a brilliant move up the inside of the Italian. For the first time this weekend, the #63 wasn’t leading.

On Lap 3, Acosta was underneath Bagnaia, but the latter bit straight back at Turn 5 to keep the KTM behind him. Acosta then gave it another go at Turn 9, but once more, it wasn’t a move that stuck. This phenomenal duel between Bagnaia and Acosta allowed Marquez to stretch his early lead out to 0.8s, with Fabio Quartararo (Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP) a further 0.8s back in P4 – the Frenchman having Mir close for company.

A few laps went by, and the situation at the front remained the same. Marquez’s lead was hovering around the second mark, with Acosta still locked onto the rear tyre of Bagnaia.

Acosta eventually made another attempt on Lap 13, and the gap between Marquez and Acosta was 1.8s, then two seconds. It was a move that stuck for Acosta, with Bagnaia potentially regretting his front medium compound tyre choice now.

Lap 14 saw Marquez land a 2:00.546, a whole second faster than Bagnaia and over half a second quicker than second-place Acosta. Mir, in P4, was also in the 2:00s, meaning the #36’s podium chances weren’t done yet – and the same could be said for Morbidelli in P5.

However, on the next two laps, Bagnaia managed to find a bit of pace to limit the damage to his advantage over Mir. With four laps to go, the gap between the Ducati and HRC riders was 1.9s, with Acosta 2.5s away from Marquez. It looked like Acosta needed Marquez to make a mistake in the closing stages if he wanted to have a realistic chance of clinching his first MotoGP win.

While a win looked like it was coming for Marquez, Aldeguer crashed out at the final corner, and Bagnaia then encountered an issue on his Ducati. He felt something wasn’t right coming into Turn 1 and immediately started looking down to the rear of his machine.

It was not clear what was wrong with his bike, but whatever the issue was, it meant Mir was now in P3, and Bagnaia was scoring zero points. A disappointing end to a great weekend for Bagnaia, but a gift for Mir and Honda after their Sprint DNF on Saturday.

In the last lap, Marquez was 2.8s clear of Acosta, who in turn had a very comfortable gap back to Mir. 1.4s split the latter to fourth place.

After clinching second place overall on Saturday, Marquez completed a fantastic weekend to win for the first time outside of Spain.

For Acosta, it was another sublime effort from the KTM rider to stick it on the box at Sepang, 13 seconds ahead of the next best KTM, as Mir earns his second Sunday podium of the season with a P3. A great start and end to the flyaway stretch for the 2020 World Champion and HRC.

–IANS

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