Doha, Qatar – Yamaha’s Valentino Rossi, 36, who was winning Grands Prix when most of his competitors were still in kindergarten, took the first win of the 2015 MotoGP season under the floodlights at the Losail International Circuit, after an electrifying late battle with pole-sitter Andrea Dovizioso on the new, vastly improved Ducati GP15.
Jonas Folger grabbed a slightly fortunate maiden Moto2 win as three of the favourites fell by the wayside while both Binder brothers from Benoni acquitted themselves creditably in Moto3.
MOTOGP
Dovizioso grabbed the hole shot off pole but that lasted less than two laps as Rossi’s team-mate Jorge Lorenzo muscled past to grab a lead he was to hold for 15 of the 22 laps.
Behind him Dovizioso and Andrea Iannone on the second of the factory Ducatis hung on like grim death, with Yonny Hernandez a surprise fourth on a satellite Pramac Ducati, as Rossi set about recovering from a disastrous start; he qualified eighth and was 10th after lap one.
World champion Marc Marquez ran wide in the first-corner melee and went into Turn 2 stone last; incredibly, he made up seven places by the end of lap one and set about getting back on terms.
By lap four Rossi was up to fourth and he posted the fastest lap of the race on lap five to close the gap to the leading trio.
Four laps later Dovizioso grabbed the lead but a lap later Lorenzo struck back, holding the status quo while until four laps from the end, while Rossi demoted Iannone to third on lap 12 and set about hunting down,
On lap 17 Lorenzo when he made his only mistake of the race, which dropped him down to forth as both Ducatis and his team-mate dived past. With two laps to go Rossi made the decisive move of the race, grabbing the lead and holding off a never-say-die attack from Dovizioso to win by 0.174sec, with Iannone only two seconds behind, half a second ahead of Lorenzo.
Five seconds later, Marquez came home an incredible fifth, nearly four seconds ahead of his team-mate Dani Pedrosa, with Cal Crutchlow (LCR Honda) the leading non-factory bike in seventh.
Bradley Smith and Pol Espargaro on the Yamaha Tech 3 satellite bikes were next, with Hernandez rounding out the top 10 and Hector Barbera (Ducati) the leading Open Class rider in 15th.
Jonas Folger took advantage of Johann Zarco’s misfortune to take his maiden Moto2 win, when the Frenchman’s Kalex developed a mechanical issue that dropped him down from a comfortable lead to finish eighth in a dramatic race where the top eight finishers were all Kalex-mounted.
Xavier Simon finished seconds, five seconds down on Folger, while seven seconds later Thomas Luthi held off an incredible late charge from Alex Rins for the final podium spot by just 0.079sec, after pre-race favourites Sam Lowes (Speed Up) and Tito Rabat (Kalex) crashed out.
Franco Morbidelli, 2014 Moto2 championship runner-up Mika Kallio, Sandro Cortese, Zarco, Louis Rossi (Tech 3) and Lorenzo Baldassari (Kalex) rounded out the top 10.
MOTO3
The junior class of the World Championship lived up to its reputation for providing incredible racing, with riders constantly swapping the lead throughout the 18-lap race. At times there were as many as 17 machines swapping paint and bashing elbows in the leading group, with less than a second separating the first nine across the finish line.
But at the moment of truth it was the Alexis Masbou who held his nerve in the drag from the final corner to the chequered flag, beating Enea Bastianini - who started from 21st place on the grid – by just 0.027sec, with Danny Kent 0.142sec adrift for an all-Honda podium.
Kent’s team-mate Efren Vazquez was fourth, just ahead of Masbou’s team-mate John McPhee, and Isaac Vinales on the factory Husqvarna, one of only three non-Hondas in the top 10.
Rookie Fabio Quartararo showed his potential by leading the race at one point before finishing seventh, ahead of Niccolo Antonelli, Francesco Bagnaia on a Mahindra and Brad Binder on a Red Bull Ajo KTM.
One of the pre-race favourites, Brad Binder’s team-mate Miguel Oliveira, fell at Turn 1 but managed to rejoin the race and finish 16th, while Darryn Binder finished a creditable 19th, 11 seconds behind the leader, in his Grand Prix debut.