Eighth for Alvaro Bautista at the Red Bull Ring

Just 0.176 seconds divided Andrea Dovizioso and Marc Márquez as they crossed the line after a thrilling fight to the final corner in the GP of Austria. The Ducati man rode superbly through the final corners to hold off the challenge of his Spanish rival, who tried everything to make a pass.

Dovizioso’s third victory of the season and fifth in total in MotoGP moves him up to second in the championship, 16 points behind Márquez. Dani Pedrosa was two seconds behind in a comfortable third place, ahead of Jorge Lorenzo, Johann Zarco, Maverick Viñales and Valentino Rossi.

Next over the line was Álvaro Bautista, who made another trademark charge to the top ten despite starting from seventeenth on the grid. After suffering rear grip problems before the race the Spaniard went back to his original set-up from Friday to comfortably match the pace of the second group in the latter stages of the race, although it was too late for him to catch them.

8th Álvaro Bautista:
“I think this is a good result for us, after a weekend when we had a lot of problems with rear grip. We have changed the bike quite a lot but we didn’t find a solution and we went back to the set-up from Friday. In any case, starting from so far back was difficult. I was careful at the start and as the laps went by I was able to recover. I was setting the same times as the second group, or even faster, but by then it was impossible to catch them.”