Marc Marquez takes his first Grand Prix victory at the Red Bull Ring with Fermin Aldeguer taking his best MotoGP finish

The bad weather had held off in the Styrian mountains at the Red Bull Ring and the weather wasn’t too hot. Marco Bezzecchi started from pole position, Aprilia’s first at the circuit. Alex Marquez started in second, but he would have to take a long lap penalty for causing a collision at Brno and Francesco Bagnaia started in third wanted to redeem his DNF in the Tissot Sprint after suffering with bad rear grip. Marc Marquez had won the last 11 races and looked to make it his sixth double in a row and his first Grand Prix victory in Austria.

The lights went out and Bezzecchi lead the way out of turn one ahead of Pecco Bagnaia and Marc Marquez. Marquez attacked Bagnaia into turn three, but the Italian got a good exit out of the hairpin and the pair were side-by-side down to turn four with Pecco holding on to second place.

On lap two Marquez tried again to pass Bagnaia and this time made it stick and had half a second to Bezzecchi in-front.

Enea Bastianini had retained fifth place from the grid but ran wide at turn one on the third lap and dropped to ninth place.

On lap four Alex Marquez took his long lap penalty and dropped down to 11th. Bagnaia was being put under pressure from Acosta for third place.

On lap seven Raul Fernandez made a move on Brad Binder for fifth place at the final corner, they both ran wide and Fermin Aldeguer took fifth from both of them, Binder was down to ninth.

Alex Marquez was stuck behind Johann Zarco for a while until the Spaniard pulled a block pass at turn nine to move into tenth place.

Marc Marquez was all over the back of Bezzecchi but wasn’t close enough to make a pass, but from lap 13 Bezzecchi pulled an eight tenth gap over Marquez.

On lap 14 reigning champion Jorge Martin crashed out at turn seven.

On lap 16 Bastianini made a late move on Fernandez into turn three and forced the Spaniard to sit up and Joan Mir took profit and took seventh place as well.

On lap 18 Acosta went up the inside of Pecco at turn nine and the Italian was forced to run off track. Aldeguer was then able to pass Acosta at turn two-b for third.

On lap 19 Marc Marquez passed Bezzecchi on the exit of turn three, but Bezzecchi retook the lead into turn six. Marquez attacked into turn one and held off the Aprilia rider to take the lead of the race.

On lap 21 Fabio Di Giannantonio’s engine expired in a cloud of smoke on the entry to turn four and retired from the race.

Pecco went wide at turn four and Bastianini was able slip up the inside of his former teammate to take fifth place.

On lap 24 Aldeguer made a late move on Bezzecchi to move into second place, he was half a second a lap faster than Marquez and was 1.1 seconds behind.

Pecco Bagnaia’s race was going from bad to worse as he was past by Joan Mir and Binder and dropped down to eighth place.

Marc Marquez crossed the line to win the 1000th MotoGP race and his first Grand Prix victory at the Red Bull Ring, Aldguer was second ahead of Bezzecchi in third. Acosta was fourth ahead of fellow KTM rider in fifth, Mir was sixth, Binder seventh, Bagnaia eighth, Fernandez in ninth and Alex Marquez in tenth.

Marc Marquez extends his lead over Alex Marquez to 142 points and 197 ahead of Pecco Bagnaia.

Featured Image: Ducati Corse.