Johann Zarco recovered from a poor start to take victory in the Austrian Moto2 Grand Prix.
The Frenchman mixed aggressive overtaking with consistent lap times as he overhauled long-time race leader Franco Morbidelli wth nine laps to go and cruise to a three-second win at the Red Bull Ring.
It marked his fourth success in five races and also the eighth conversion from his last nine pole position starts. In the process, Zarco increased his stranglehold at the top of the Moto2 standings with a 34-point lead heading to Brno.
Thomas Luthi looked as if he was going to following a similar pattern to Zarco, in dropping back a little at the start before a controlled recovery to take second.
However, the Swiss buckled under last lap pressure from Morbidelli as the Italian moved into second at the penultimate corner and then Alex Rins made a move at the last corner to knock Luthi off the podium.
Third marked a good result for Rins who had been battling with former teammate Alex Marquez for fifth but once clear of the Spaniard took advantage of the battles in front to take his first podium since Barcelona.
The surprise of the race was Marcel Schrotter, who only a had a season’s best of 10th before Spielberg. The German ran an impressive second for the first half of the race before eventually dropping back to a still excellent fifth.
Marquez had to settle for sixth ahead of Takaaki Nakagami and Lorenzo Baldassarri completed the top eight.
Briton Sam Lowes, who was third in the riders standings at the start of the weekend, endured a miserable race as a first off at Turn 9 was followed by a second race-ending crash at the same corner due to damage from his earlier incident.
Simone Corsi was the only other retirement has crashed while attempting a move at Turn 3 and Jonas Folger finished over a minute behind the leaders following a trip into the gravel at Turn 4.
