BREAKING NEWS: 2024 Championship Standings…

One of the championship candidates was penalized three positions on the grid prior to the start of the twenty-two-lap race, thus Czech jazz musician Jan Smigmator began the race with the Czech national anthem. This weekend, hard tires are the norm, and the first race started at 29ºC.

Alvaro Bautista was demoted to tenth spot on the grid, heading the fourth row and moving Michael Ruben Rinaldi up to the third row after slowing down Danilo Petrucci during the Superpole session this morning.

Nicolo Bulega and Toprak Razgatlioglu led into the first turn, but Andrea Iannone surged through to take second place heading into the right/left turn. With no jump starts announced, Alvaro Bautista had a great start, but Danilo Petrucci held him off in fourth place and took one of his front wings as a trophy.

Lap two saw Razgatlioglu take the lead with four Ducatis trailing him. Iannone led Bulega and Petrucci, while Bautista fell farther back and into Remy Gardner’s grasp. In 1’31.805, Razgatlioglu recorded the fastest lap. Due to their involvement in course cutting, Axel Bassani and Hayden Gillem were under investigation.

On lap three, Petrucci dropped out of the race to take second place, and Razgatlioglu set a time of 1’31.540, a second and a half ahead of Iannone and Bulega. After getting by Bautista on the outside to take fifth place, Gardner was soon followed by Alex Lowes, who forced his way past the Ducati rider to take seventh place. On the fifth lap, Gardner had an advantage of nearly a second over Razgatlioglu, who was leading by more than two seconds due to a position swap between Alex Lowes and Bautista.

While Gardner was closing on Petrucci by more over a second per lap, Iannone and Bulega were still in front of him. At the conclusion of lap six, Bulega overtook Iannone for second place, beckoning the independent Ducatis to follow.