Moto2 Austria Race: Raul Fernandez leads rookie 1-2
Raul Fernandez wins his fourth Moto2 race in a rookie 1-2.
Raul Fernandez takes his fourth Moto2 victory as a rookie, continuing his stunning season and closing the championship lead down to a manageable 19 points, his season so far is putting his name up with the strongest Moto2 riders we have ever seen despite being a rookie. We aren’t going to mince our words here, it was a pretty boring race honestly but it was incredible to watch Fernandez manage and maintain his lead in such an impressive manner with such class and prestige. He beat fellow rookie Ai Ogura to the line in a stunning rookie 1-2 with Ogura really proving why we have been talking about him this year, it has been really impressive to see the smaller rider step into the Moto2 class and be strong all year long despite his height disadvantage.
The race started with first corner chaos caused by Cameron Beaubier who made a rather desperate move at turn one to make up some positions, forcing compatriot Joe Roberts to move aside and crash into various riders with both Stefano Manzi and Jorge Navarro going down, Beaubier copping a double long lap penalty for this. Clearly he’s been taking notes from his ex-teammate Garrett Gerloff over in WorldSBK has been doing similar moves.
It was a race of stunning results for many riders with the obvious 1-2 cast aside, we saw Augusto Fernandez take a strong third consecutive podium, finally getting over his hump of the front tyre which he struggled with greatly last year, he finished in third place leading his teammate Sam Lowes in fourth place.
Rounding off the top 6 were Somkiat Chantra and Celestino Vietti, both riders struggling early on in the season before turning this around and smashing out a really strong result, Vietti’s P6 means we now have three rookies in the top 6 which shows incredible potential for the future of the class.
Remy Gardner and Aron Canet had a little swapsies during the race with Gardner overtaking for seventh and apologising for the aggressive move, fast forward to the next lap where Canet fought back, wiggling his finger to say ‘no’ afterwards, eventually Gardner would once again get back in front and hold onto this, limiting damage limitation for his championship charge.
Marco Bezzecchi rounded out the top 10 coming from a lowly P16 after a qualifying crash, definitely a race to forget for the Italian ahead of Jake Dixon.
Full results –
