Race report

Moto2 Misano II

Misano Moto2: Bastianini wins red-flagged race

MotoGP-bound Enea Bastianini won a shortened Moto2 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix to close in on the world championship lead after points leader Luca Marini was fourth.

Lewis Duncan

Edited: Sep 20, 2020, 5:42 PM

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Enea Bastianini, Italtrans Racing Team

Bastianini is set to step up to MotoGP next season with the Avintia squad after confirming last weekend he has signed a deal with Ducati.

The original race only ran for six full laps when spots of rain forced the red flag to be flown, with Bastianini having taken the lead the tour before.

The second start had to be abandoned owing to worsening rain with the entire field on slicks, and a delay of around 15 minutes was had before a 10-lap restart got underway just after 1:10pm local time.

Bastianini was jumped by Marini off the line, though the Italtrans rider aggressively tried to take the lead back at Turn 4 and forced both wide – allowing Xavi Vierge on the Petronas Sprinta bike to hit the front.

Vierge was overhauled by Bastianini through the fast Curvone right-hander at Turn 11, with world championship leader Marini losing spots as his decision to stick with the harder rubber he used for the original start looked to be backfiring.

Bastianini immediately put a second between himself and the chasing Vierge, with Marco Bezzecchi on the sister VR46 bike working his way up to the back of the podium battle in fourth having elected to switch to a soft tyre for the restart.

He would find himself in second on lap six when Marcel Schrotter forced both himself and Vierge out wide at the Turn 8 Quercia corner on lap six.

Vierge’s race would last just one more corner as Schrotter clattered into him up the inside of the Tramonto right-hander and sent him into retirement.

With Bezzecchi and Marc VDS’ Sam Lowes moving ahead of Schrotter, Bastianini came under serious threat in the closing stages.

Bastianini’s lead came down from over a second to eight tenths on the eighth lap, with the gap dipping underneath six tenths at one stage.

But the Italtrans rider held sway and led Bezzecchi across the line by 0.720 seconds to move to five points off championship leader Marini.

Lowes completed the podium after an early tussle with Marini, while Schrotter rounded out the top five on his Intact GP machine.

Petronas Sprinta’s Jake Dixon scored his first top six finish in Moto2 in sixth, beating Speed Up’s Jorge Navarro and Fabio Di Giannantonio, the sister Intact GP bike of Tom Luthi and Pons’ Hector Garzo – who was promoted a place after Nicolo Bulega (Gresini) was docked a place for exceeding track limits on the last lap.

Ajo KTM’s Jorge Martin was forced to miss the second Misano round after once again testing positive for COVID-19. He was replaced by Mattia Pasini, who just missed the points in 16th.

Race results:

Cla # Rider Bike Time 1 33 Italy Enea Bastianini
Kalex 2 72 Italy Marco Bezzecchi
Kalex 0.720 3 22 United Kingdom Sam Lowes
Kalex 1.124 4 10 Italy Luca Marini
Kalex 2.310 5 23 Germany Marcel Schrotter
Kalex 4.132 6 96 Jake Dixon
Kalex 7.201 7 9 Spain Jorge Navarro
Speed Up 7.558 8 21 Italy Fabio Di Giannantonio
Speed Up 7.704 9 12 Switzerland Thomas Luthi
Kalex 7.762 10 40 Spain Hector Garzo
Kalex 8.249 11 11 Italy Nicolo Bulega
Kalex 8.141 12 24 Italy Simone Corsi
MV Agusta 8.663 13 44 Spain Arón Canet
Speed Up 9.189 14 19 Italy Lorenzo Dalla Porta
Kalex 12.538 15 62 Italy Stefano Manzi
MV Agusta 12.744 16 54 Italy Mattia Pasini
KTM 12.935 17 42 Spain Marcos Ramirez
Kalex 13.227 18 37 Spain Augusto Fernandez
Kalex 13.779 19 55 Malaysia Hafizh Syahrin
Speed Up 14.525 20 57 Spain Edgar Pons
Kalex 15.028 21 35 Thailand Somkiat Chantra
Kalex 15.511 22 64 Netherlands Bo Bendsneyder
NTS 18.160 23 45 Japan Tetsuta Nagashima
Kalex 18.079 24 27 Indonesia Andi Gilang
Kalex 21.265 25 7 Italy Lorenzo Baldassarri
Kalex 25.587 74 Piotr Biesiekirski
NTS 97 Spain Xavi Vierge
Kalex 16 United States Joe Roberts
Kalex 99 Malaysia Kasma Daniel Kasmayudin
Kalex View full results

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