Andrea Dovizioso dominated the MotoGP field en route to winning his third race of the season in front of a home crowd in Misano.

Starting from the second row, the Italian saw his Factory Ducati team-mate Jorge Lorenzo take the lead from the off and many feared the Spaniard may never be seen again. After seeing Lorenzo take the lead from the off, both Dovizioso and Marc Marquez moved past Jack Miller to set about chasing the leader.

On the sixth lap, Dovizioso moved past Lorenzo to take the lead and started edging away from his team-mate. With the hammer down, the Italian edged away and maintained a gap of around two second from the battle behind him. Despite a late scare with Lorenzo closing him down, Dovizioso monitored the gap and held on to secure the home win.

Behind Dovi, Lorenzo and Marquez set about a race long battle from the lesser podium spots. Lorenzo towed Marquez around for the first half of the race before a mistake at turn four allowed the World Champion past. However the power of the Desmosedici allowed Lorenzo back past him a lap later, only for Marquez to battle and not make it easy for his 2019 team-mate. Just when the race seemed to be settling down, the drama behind Dovizioso was back as with just two laps left, Lorenzo lost the front end of his GP18 at turn eight and crashed out of second place. This left Marquez to claim the all important 20 points and in turn promoted Cal Crutchlow to third place.

Crutchlow had a lonely race, but secured place and top independent team honours. Despite running with the pace of the leaders for large parts of the race, Crutchlow could never close in the two-second gap but benefitted greatly from Lorenzo’s mistake.

Alex Rins was fifth and ahead of Maverick Vinales who will be disappointed he couldn’t capitalise on his front row start and ended up in fifth. Dani Pedrosa fought through to finish in sixth and ahead of the strangely subdued Valentino Rossi who couldn’t produce any Sunday magic in front of the local fans, finishing 18 seconds behind Dovizioso.

Andrea Iannone, Alvaro Bautista and Johann Zarco rounded out the top ten whilst Danilo Petrucci was eleventh. Franco Morbidelli was twelfth with Taka Nakagami, Aleix Espargaro and Michele Pirro rounded out the point scorers.

Bradley Smith was sixteenth and ahead of the crashing duo of Jorge Lorenzo and Jack Miller who were seventeenth and eightieth respectively.