The World Food Programme has halved rations since March and warned that without renewed US funding, all assistance could end by November.
On the first start, sprint winner Alex Marquez had a perfect launch to take the lead from Quartararo, but just as he leaned into turn one, he lost control and crashed, allowing Marc Marquez to take the lead.The elder Marquez also lost control, however, and crashed out of the lead – but the Marquez brothers earned a reprieve when the red flag came out for an oil spill in the final sector after Franco Morbidelli and Aleix Espargaro collided and crashed.
Since three laps had not been completed, all riders were eligible for the restart. Quartararo took the lead from Francesco Bagnaia and streaked away to a full second’s lead on the opening lap.Both factory Ducatis suffered on lap three at Copse corner when they went wide as Marc Marquez and Bagnaia dropped to ninth and 10th place.Bagnaia’s race ended on the following lap when he crashed while Bezzecchi moved up to third behind Pramac Racing’s Jack Miller.
Behind them, Marc Marquez was a man on a mission as he methodically picked his way through the pack, and by lap 11, he had moved up to fourth.Yamaha’s dreams of taking the chequered flag went up in smoke as Quartararo signalled he had a problem with his bike, and the Frenchman relinquished his lead of nearly five seconds as his ride-height device had failed.
Quartararo stopped by the side of the track, hopped off his bike and sank to his knees with his head on the tarmac as the shell-shocked Yamaha garage looked on.
“When I saw Fabio with a technical problem, I even thought about a victory,” said Zarco, the first Honda rider to take back-to-back podiums since Marc Marquez in 2021.Raza, who was part of Zimbabwe’s Test team until Saturday afternoon, joined the Qalandars’ playing XI 10 minutes prior to the toss for the final on Sunday evening in Pakistan’s eastern metropolis.
The Pakistan-born off-break bowler and lower-middle-order batter took one wicket and scored 22 runs off seven balls as Lahore chased a target of 202 with one ball to spare.Lahore’s run chase was largely built around Kusal Perera’s 62 runs, with support from top-order batters Mohammad Naeem and Abdullah Shafique, but it was Raza’s whirlwind journey from the United Kingdom to Pakistan and his subsequent role in hitting the winning runs that stole the show and Lahori hearts.
The 39-year-old recounted his last 24 hours by saying he had “dinner in Birmingham, breakfast in Dubai, lunch in Abu Dhabi and flew straight to Lahore for the PSL final”.Raza bowled 25 overs in the Test on Friday and batted for 20-plus overs on Saturday before leaving for Pakistan.