Valencia Moto3: Wildcard Oncu takes shock win on debut

Reigning Red Bull Rookies champion Oncu lined up fourth for his first Moto3 wildcard appearance and gained a position at the start, running behind pole-sitter Arbolino and the fast-starting Bezzecchi.

The early stages of the race saw several riders crash, including Tatsuki Suzuki collecting Aron Canet and Lorenzo Dalla Porta on the opening lap, and Bezzecchi soon hit the deck as well.

Arbolino subsequently built a safe gap over Oncu, who also pulled away from John McPhee, the Briton soon falling behind the charging Gresini duo of Fabio Di Giannantonio and Jorge Martin.

However drama ensued when Arbolino's comfortable run to his maiden win ended with a crash on lap 11 at Turn 4, giving Oncu a lead of over six seconds.

Oncu, who will make his full-time series debut next year with the Ajo KTM squad, even managed to further extend his lead although his gap was halved after a near-crash scare on the last lap at Turn 6 and he ultimately won by 4.0s.

Di Giannantonio started to struggle and fell behind Martin and McPhee, the duo completing the podium.

Jakub Kornfeil held sixth in the first half of the race but couldn't keep up with the top five and by the time Enea Bastianini found his way past the Czech rider, he was over 10 seconds adrift.

Bastianini eventually took fifth thanks to Arbolino's crash, followed by Jaume Masia, who became the top rookie of 2018.

Niccolo Antonelli finished seventh, with Nakarin Atiratphuvapat settling for eighth from second on the grid but still securing his best finish of his Moto3 career.

The top 10 was completed by Marcos Ramirez and Celestino Vietti.

Suzuki, Canet, the twice-crashing Alonso Lopez, Dennis Foggia, Kaito Toba, Albert Arenas, Izam Ikmal, Arbolino, Phillipp Oettl and Vicente Perez failed to finish.

Bezzecchi recovered to the point-scoring positions from his early crash only to fall again, but still took the chequered flag alongside Kornfeil, Darryn Binder and Dalla Porta, all of whom were able to continue after crashes.

Moto3 race results

Cla	Rider	Bike	Laps	Time
1	Can Oncu	KTM	23
2	Jorge Martin	Honda	23	4.071
3	John McPhee	KTM	23	2.059
4	Fabio Di Giannantonio	Honda	23	6.767
5	Enea Bastianini	Honda	23	1.838
6	Jaume Masia	KTM	23	7.249
7	Niccolo Antonelli	Honda	23	4.657
8	Nakarin Atiratphuvapat	Honda	23	4.117
9	Marcos Ramirez	KTM	23	2.653
10	Celestino Vietti	KTM	23	5.597
11	Ayumu Sasaki	Honda	23	3.324
12	Stefano Nepa	KTM	23	6.599
13	Raul Fernandez	KTM	23	5.503
14	Andrea Migno	KTM	23	0.151
15	Jakub Kornfeil	KTM	23	1.839
16	Kazuki Masaki	KTM	23	0.798
17	Gabriel Rodrigo	KTM	23	3.319
18	Lorenzo Dalla Porta	Honda	23	34.552
19	Darryn Binder	KTM	22
20	Marco Bezzecchi	KTM	22	27.564
	Vicente Perez	KTM	21
	Philipp Ottl	KTM	15
	Tony Arbolino	Honda	11
	Izam Ikmal	Honda	7
	Albert Arenas	KTM	6
	Kaito Toba	Honda	4
	Dennis Foggia	KTM	1
	Aron Canet	Honda
	Alonso Lopez	Honda
	Tatsuki Suzuki	Honda