Francesco Bagnaia and Augusto Fernandez won the famous 100km of Champions race on Saturday at Valentino Rossi’s moto ranch in Tavullia, Italy. The race is held on a dirt track and brings together top riders from MotoGP, WorldSBK, Moto2 and other racing championships.

Bagnaia and Fernandez started the race from ninth place on the grid. They worked very hard and slowly moved up to the front. They crossed the finish line first, 2.3 seconds ahead of Diogo Moreira and Federico Fuligni, who finished second.

Third place went to Luca Marini, who is Rossi’s brother and a five-time winner of the event. He raced with Matteo Patacca, and they were only 3.9 seconds behind the leaders.

This was Bagnaia’s first 100km of Champions victory. The Ducati rider said he was very happy to win at home with his friends and fans supporting him. On social media he wrote, “Winning at home hits different ”. Bagnaia recently finished the MotoGP season in fifth place, so this win gave him an important boost.

Augusto Fernandez also enjoyed the victory. This year he has been helping Yamaha by testing their new MotoGP bike and doing some race wild-cards, so this was a great way for him to end the year.

One special change for this year’s event was how the rider pairs were made. Instead of choosing partners themselves, an algorithm (a computer system) picked the pairs based on results from the first day of riding.

On Friday, Moreira took pole position during qualifying. Later that day, 46-year-old Valentino Rossi won the first ever Sprint race held at the ranch, with Luca Marini second and Elia Bartolini third. Bartolini then won the traditional Americana elimination race.

There was one scary moment on Friday. Mattia Pasini, a former winner of the event, crashed and had to be taken to hospital by helicopter. Later he sent a message to fans saying he was okay and thanked the doctors.

The weekend showed once again why Rossi’s ranch is such a popular place.