Moto2 Le Mans RACE: Raul Fernandez doubles up as a rookie
Rookie Raul Fernandez has proven that his win in Portugal wasn’t a fluke.
Raul Fernandez is proving to be a spectacular Moto2 rider, there is already much talk of him moving straight into MotoGP next year and with this kind of form it’s more than likely it’ll happen now only 1 point behind his teammate Remy Gardner in the championship standings riding a champions ride today. He controlled the race from pole position and led every lap after he got past Marco Bezzecchi on lap 5, after lap 5 he carried on pushing forward and opened up a gap to the riders behind him coming home to take his second victory of the year.
It was a Red Bull KTM Ajo 1-2 today thanks to some incredibly strong late race pace from Remy Gardner who was able to get past Bo Bendsneyder and Marco Bezzecchi to try and close the gap to his teammate and squeeze some more points out of the race, it wasn’t to be but a second-place is not something to be disappointed about but it does mean that there is only one point separating him and his teammate, a third-place today would’ve demoted him to second in the standings. The third placed rider today was Marco Bezzecchi who led the race at the start but his pace wasn’t strong enough to maintain this position as he dropped a few places over the race distance, he came home in third place overall and sits in the same position in the standings with a points tally of 72 matching his race number.
Tony Arbolino in fourth?! Yes you heard that right, the Moto2 rookie battled his way through from P19 to take fourth place with some insane race pace today, his best result so far in the class and I am sure it won’t be long until we see the highly likeable rider on the podium again screeching “GOOD FEELINGS” in Parc Ferme once again, he finished ahead of Bo Bendsneyder who put in a valiant performance today to take fifth place.
There were three rookies in the top 10 if you look at Ai Ogura in P7 who once again took an incredibly strong result this year, his adaptation to Moto2 has been seamless and he is impressing race by race and is massively impressing, another rider impressing is Fabio Di Giannantonio, the Italian had to take two long lap penalties, one for a rough move on Hector Garzo and a second for not doing the first correctly! He pushed himself incredibly hard and was able to take a strong eighth-placed finish.
Looking further down it was a shame for Hafizh Syahrin who ran as high as P10 before dropping way down to P16 ahead of his 17 year old teammate who returns from injury in an impressive P17.
It was also a day of crashes for some top riders who will be crying into their pillows tonight, Joe Roberts crashed out of the podium positions before his compatriot Cameron Beaubier stacked it in a career-best P6, we also saw Sam Lowes clatter into Xavi Vierge and will have to do a double long lap penalty next time in Mugello.
Full results –
