Vinales ends Yamaha win drought as Marquez, Zarco clash

Full MotoGP race results from Phillip Island

Maverick Vinales has ended Yamaha’s winless run in MotoGP with a flawless victory at Phillip Island ahead of Suzuki’s Andrea Iannone, while newly-crowned Marc Marquez had a horror crash with Johann Zarco which took both riders out of the race.

The Movistar Yamaha rider recovered from a slow start, dropping down to eighth place at the end of lap one having started from the front row, to carve his way up the order in the early laps.

Rather than stick with the pack to converse his tyres, Vinales bolted into the lead by lap eight to lead a factory Yamaha one-two with Valentino Rossi taking chase. But the Spanish rider produced a series of fastest laps to charge clear of the chasing pack and build a comfortable time gap during the middle third of the race.

With his rivals squabbling for position, as a five-rider battle emerged between both factory Ducati and Suzuki riders plus Rossi, Vinales had over four seconds in hand with five laps to go.

Despite a gallant chase from Iannone, who had been tipped as favourite on practice pace, the Suzuki rider couldn’t catch Vinales who held on for victory and Yamaha’s first since the 2017 Dutch round.

The victory also marks the Spaniard’s first win since last year’s Le Mans race and came as welcome relief after a difficult year for the Japanese manufacturer.

The front-runners were aided by a scary crash involving Marquez and Zarco when at the start of lap six the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 rider ran into the rear tyre of Marquez travelling at around 300kmh at the end of the start/finish straight.

Zarco was thrown off his Yamaha but fortunately walked away without injury, while Marquez – who celebrated clinching his seventh world title last weekend – retired to the pits with damage. It marks Marquez’s first DNF since the 2017 British MotoGP.

With Iannone fending off Dovizioso for second place, Jorge Lorenzo’s stand-in Alvaro Bautista impressed with fourth place as Alex Rins got the better of Rossi on the final lap to take fifth place from the Italian rider.

Behind the front-runners Jack Miller failed to close the gap on his Pramac Ducati, having darted into the lead briefly on the opening lap, with the home favourite having to settle for seventh place.

Franco Morbidelli was Honda’s highest finisher in eighth place for Marc VDS, with both Repsol Honda riders crashing out plus the injured Cal Crutchlow missing the race, as Aleix Espargaro finished strongly to take ninth place for Aprilia.

Bradley Smith collected another top 10 ahead of his departure from Red Bull KTM at the end of 2018, while Karel Abraham secured his best result of the year using Bautista’s Angel Nieto Ducati GP17 with 11^th place.

Danilo Petrucci recovered from an opening-lap off while leading to come home in 12^th place for Pramac Ducati as Scott Redding (Aprilia), Taaaki Nakagami (LCR Honda) and Xavier Simoen (Avintia Ducati) completed the points places.

Thomas Luthi, Jordi Torres and Mike Jones were the final classified finishers, as Pol Espargaro retired late on with a suspected tyre problem with his Red Bull KTM while Hafizh Syahrin (Tech 3) and Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda) crashed out.