A dream for Alex Rins, a nightmare for Pecco Bagnaia. This is an effective summary of race day at Austin, where the Honda returned to winning ways with a rider other than Marc Marquez for the first time in five years. Cal Crutchlow was the last to achieve such a feat, in Argentina, when he too was wearing LCR colours.

The rider in question is the aforementioned Alex Rins, who put together the perfect race at COTA. Getting away well from the front row, the Spaniard pursued Bagnaia right from the off, before profiting from the Ducatista’s error and powering to the line unperturbed, scoring podium number 100 for Lucio Cecchinello’s team in the process and putting an end to Honda’s longest period without a win since 1982.

Bagnaia crashes again, first podium of 2023 for Quartararo

The most disappointed is of course Bagnaia, who suffered an unlikely turn 2 crash on lap 8 of the race. A mistake that prevented him from moving up into the lead in a championship that is still in the hands of Marco Bezzecchi, sixth across the line.

Rins was not the only one to celebrate, in that Luca Marini scored his first podium in a full length race, finishing second ahead of Fabio Quartararo. The Frenchman pulled off something of a miracle, particularly considering his comments on Saturday and the Yamaha’s ongoing issues. Maverick Vinales closed fourth, conditioned by another poor start, with Franco Morbidelli finishing eighth and Fabio Di Giannantonio ninth.

The knockout-type race saw just 13 riders reach the finish line. Aside from the incidents cited above, there were crashes also for Jack Miller, while he was lying third, and for Jorge Martin, who fell early on and took out a blameless Alex Marquez.