Oct
12
Alex Marquez lead a battling group of six racers over the line in the Japanese Moto3 Grand Prix, making a smooth pass inside Ajo riders Danny Kent and Jack Miller to snatch his third win of the season.
The Estrella Galicia rider hit the front after Kent’s Husqvarna went onto the grass along the back straight while racing hard with Red Bull KTM race leader Miller. The pair then both ran wide under braking at the following turn, allowing Marquez space on the inside to ease past for the win.
In doing so Honda’s Marquez increases his Championship lead to the difference of a race win – 25 points – over Miller.
Efren Vazquez followed Marquez through to secure second for SaxoPrint-RTG, while Ambrogio Racing’s Brad Binder gave Mahindra a podium finish with third as the South African Battled John McPhee to the line for position.
This left the British rider fourth, but marked his best ever race result with an improvement of three places.
Miller crossed the line as the best placed KTM rider in fifth ahead of Kent in sixth after the pairs unfortunate run wide onto the dirty part of the track together.
The opening laps saw a five way tangle with some hard passing between early leader Kent, championship rivals Miller and Marquez, and the Mahindras of Binder and Oilveira, with the lap record dropping all the time.
The group were then caught by the SaxoPrint-RTG team-mates – John McPhee, who had dropped to seventh in the opening corners and Efren Vazquez who lead warm-up as strong passing and fast lapping made it impossible to break away at the front.
Oliveira had a nasty highside onto the concrete of the slip road and though needing to be stretchered away initially later walked off as McPhee reeled himself back to the top four.
Behind the leaders Romano Fenati was in charge of the chasing pack for Sky Racing Team VR46, finishing seventh after making up positions from 17th on the grid.
He was followed by fellow fighting Italians Enea Bastianini in eighth for Junior Team Go Fun just holding off his team-mate Nico Antonelli, who had faded from a front row start for ninth.
Tenth went to an angry Alex Rins, the Estrella Galicia rider seeing his title hopes fade after making a poor start which he never recovered from.
Team Calvo’s Isaac Vinales scored eleventh , easily ahead of the remaining points finishers – Kearl Hanika (Red Bull KTM Ajo) in twelfth, Francesco Bagnaia (Sky Racing Team VR46) in 13th, Zulfahmi Khairuddin (Ongetta-AirAsia) in 14th and Alessandro Tonucci (CIP) all fighting hard for the final points.
The first lap was full of incidents with Niklas Ajo getting shunted by Bastianini forcing him wide, the Finn then had a high side as he tried to get back on the gas from his Husqvarna. In the background Scott Deroue also crashed with both of the Japanese wild-cards Sena Yamada and Hikari Okubo.
Mahindra’s Andrea Migno and San Carlo team Italia rider Matteo Ferrari also failed to see the end of lap one.
Alexis Masbou, who also ran into trouble on the warm up lap met with the gravel after falling from his Ongetta-Rivacold machine as he made contact with the top ten with 14 laps remaining. The Frenchman returned to the track but later retired to the pits.
Juanfran Guevara was next to exit leaving his Mapfre Aspar in the gravel with with eleven laps remaining after having been as high as seventh.
Just one lap later in the dark of the loops tunnel Jakub Kornfeil and Jorge Navarro had a incident leaving their bikes on the track, they were quickly cleared as the riders were helped away.
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