The night in the desert ends in P11

Starting from P20, there was a Enea Bastianini hungry for more after a strong Tissot Sprint on Saturday which saw him take the 13th place in just 11 laps. Bestia was therefore looking forward to more laps under the spotlights of the Lusail International Circuit. When lights were out at 20:00 local time (UTC+3), Bastianini quickly gained one position to exit lap 1 in 19th in contact with World Champion Jorge Martin. Soon he moved past the new number 1 to 18th to sit behind Raul Fernandez, and continued to progress to 17th with Jack Miller at sight after three laps. Both Bastianini and Miller moved past a dropping Raul Fernandez, and that was already P16 after 4 laps. Once the Red Bull KTM Tech3 rider settled a bit more into his pace, he could overtake Jack Miller in lap 6 to next have his eyes on Alex Rins. After many struggles to find a path through the Yamaha Factory rider, Enea finally made it to 15th with an overtake on lap 12 which unlocked him a bit more. The pace was great, in the low 1’53, similar to the group at the front. Soon he could also overtake rookie Ai Ogura, but a small mistake caused him a loss of 2 positions. Enea quickly re-focused, and gained back those 2 positions in no time to 13th, now behind Luca Marini with just six laps to go. 0.8 seconds separated Enea from Marini as four laps remained, but the HRC rider made the extra effort to move past Brad Binder whose performance appeared to drop. That was enough for Bastianini to provide a last and late effort to progress to 12th, a position he kept until the end. His teammate’s late penalty meant that he officially finished 11th. Good job once again from the back of the grid for Enea Bastianini who brings home a few points after another strong remontada. He will look forward to continuing improving as we head next to Europe for the iconic Spanish Grand Prix in Jerez, on April 25-26-27.

The race was a bit difficult at the start, I struggled to overtake some riders so I lost a bit of time, in addition to making a few mistakes. For the rest, the pace was good. I struggled a bit in the fast corners on the left side, which meant that I kept losing on the rider ahead of me. Anyway, I am happy because we have improved from yesterday and we have been more competitive. We need to keep trying, there is potential for us to perform better, so I look forward to reaching that point.