Last year’s Moto3 championship runner-up Alex Rins has taken his first ever Moto2 win at the Indianapolis MotoGP round, finishing ahead of series leader Johann Zarco and Franco Morbidelli while Britain’s Sam Lowes crashed out with four laps to go.
The race was declared wet but with the track drying, the majority of riders decided to start on slicks and it took and it was a fascinating frits few laps as they tried to adjust to the conditions. Once things had settled down there was an incredible battle at the front between Rins, Rabat, Zarco and Dominique Aegerter (Technomag Racing Interwetten).
Each rider took turns at the front of the field as fans were treated to a spectacular display of aggressive overtaking in what was more reminiscent of a Moto3™ race. It would take until the penultimate lap for Rins to secure the win after Zarco had ran wide, taking Aegerter with him, to give the Spaniard some breathing space at the front.
Rins eventually crossed the line almost half a second ahead of championship leader Zarco to take his 9th career GP victory (8xMoto3™ 1x Moto2™), with Morbidelli taking advantage of Aegerter running wide to steal third and take his first career Moto2™ podium.
Aegerter, fresh from his podium at the Suzuka 8 Hours endurance race, was battling at the front for long parts of the race before missing out on the podium by 0.406s as he had to settle for fourth. Rabat (+2.963) took a battling fifth after a duel with Morbidelli that must have brought back memories of their last corner crash at the German GP last time out.
Thomas Luthi (Derendinger Racing Interwetten) was sixth, with AGR Teams Axel Pons recovering from an earlier crash in Warm Up to take seventh. Xavier Simeon (Federal Oil Gresini Moto2), Takaaki Nakagami (Idemitsu Honda Team Asia) and Alex Marquez (Paginas Amarillas HP40) completed the top ten.
Speed Up Racing’s Sam Lowes crashed out while in 6th at Turn 15 with just 5 laps to go, after the British rider had fought his way back into contention for the podium. Hafizh Syahrin (Petronas Raceline Malaysia) was also in contention for a top 6 finish when he crashed out on the final lap, while Mika Kallio, who had started from the front row, also went down after contact with Lowes on lap 11.
There were also DNF’s for Tech 3’s debutant Xavi Vierge, Randy Krummenacher, Ratthapark Wilairot, Sandro Cortese and Julian Simon who had actually led the race at the start.
All this means that Zarco (199pts) has extended his lead in the Moto2™ World to 71 points, with Rins (128pts) leapfrogging Rabat (125pts) into second.
