ASSEN, Netherlands: MotoGP heads to the Dutch Grand Prix on Sunday fresh from a thrilling race in Germany that seemed to demonstrate a continental shift in the balance of biking power.
On the Sachsenring, Spaniard Jorge Martin held off world champion Francesco Bagnaia after a desperate battle to finish the weekend with a maximum 37 points after also winning Saturday's sprint.
The "Martinator" cut the Italian's lead in the championship to 16 points.
Ducatis took eight of the top nine places at the Sachsenring. European bikes occupied the other top-11 places.
After Honda's Marc Marquez dropped out just before the race with a broken thumb, only three Japanese bikes started, the lowest number since the last race of the 1969 season.
The best finisher was Yamaha's Franco Morbidelli in 12th in a race that highlighted how dramatic have been the dip in Japan's fortunes.
From 1975 to 2021, Honda, Yamaha and Suzuki shared all but one rider's title. Suzuki dropped out at the end of last season, just two years after Joan Mir won them a world title.
For the last race before the summer break, MotoGP head to Assen's "Cathedral of Speed", a track riders profess to love. Bagnaia even boasts a tattoo of its outline on his arm.
Martin rides for Ducati satellite team Pramac. Bagnaia is on a factory Ducati. In Germany, they were followed home by three more Bologna Bullets: Johann Zarco on the second Pramac, then Marco Bezzecchi and Luca Marini of Valentino Rossi's Mooney team.
All eight bikes from the four teams that use Ducatis, finished in the top nine.
Ducati seem to have finally matched raw speed with control. Last season Bagnaia broke through, adding to the Italian manufacturer's lone title, won by Casey Stoner in 2007.
Having eight bikes in the field to provide data helps. With the top four riders in the standings all on Ducatis, the battle for the title looks as if it will stay in house.
"A formidable '5 out of 5' in an all-Ducati race result, on a track where our last win was scored 15 years ago," said Ducati racing general manager Luca Dall'Igna on the factory team's website. "This says everything about the versatility of our bikes, protagonists on every track."
Bagnaia won at Assen last year, but no rider has won twice in a row on the Dutch track since Valentino Rossi in 2004 and 2005.
Bagnaia said he wanted to land a psychological blow on his rivals prior to the break.
"It's the last race before a long summer break," said Bagnaia. "It will be important to consolidate our position in the standings."
Six-time world champion Marquez is having a hard enough time of it when he does race but he says despite his broken thumb he will start in the Netherlands.
"I arrive in Assen looking to put the hard weekend in Germany behind me," Marquez said on the Honda site. "The objective is to gather a lot of good data for the engineers so they can work over these next weeks. This is the focus for the weekend."
Fabio Quartararo, the champion for Yamaha in 2021, also talked as if his main goal was working on developing his struggling bike.
"Though points-wise the German GP wasn't a very successful race weekend, we did learn from it, and that's also worth something," he said on the team web site.
The riders face a tough schedule when racing resumes at Silverstone in England on August 6.
There rapidly follow another three in Europe before a seven race swing through Asia and Australia, starting with the first ever race in India on September 24. The season concludes in Valencia on November 26. --AFP