Franco Morbidelli made it back-to-back wins in the 2017 Moto2 World Championship with victory in a tense Argentine Grand Prix.
The Italian rider has been on stunning form all weekend, and took the holeshot at the start after carving past pole man Miguel Oliveira at the second corner, with Marc VDS team-mate Alex Marquez following suit.
Morbidelli and Marquez proceeded to gap the rest of the field pretty quickly, with the Italian keeping a fairly comfortable margin of seven tenths for much of the opening half of the race.
However, Marquez began to up his pace as the race neared its conclusion, the Spaniard setting the timing screens ablaze. Posting a personal best effort of 1m43.5s with six laps to go, Marquez had cut his team-mate’s advantage to just four tenths of a second.
KTM’s Oliveira had also reeled in the leaders, but his charge faded at Turn 5 three laps from home when he made a mistake. As the Marc VDS duo crossed the line for the penultimate time, Morbidelli, appearing to be suffering with front grip, held sway.
Crucially, the Qatar winner nailed his line through Turns 3 and 4 to give himself a buffer onto the back straight and break Marquez’s slipstream.
The Spaniard pushed his Kalex as hard as possible into Turn 7 to try and pull Morbidelli in, but asked too much of his 23-lap-old rear Dunlop and was spat into the scenery. He remounted to finish a dejected 21st.
Twitter: DRAMA! Marquez crashes out on the final lap – the win is Morbidelli’s! #ArgentinaGP https://t.co/Nu3yriZsNg (@MotoGP)
Morbidelli had a comfortable 1.6s margin over Oliveira to cruise across the line to become the first Italian to win back-to-back Moto2 races, with Oliveira sensationally taking KTM’s maiden rostrum in just their second race. Tom Luthi completed the podium.
Forward Racing’s Lorenzo Baldassarri took the chequered flag in a lonely fourth ahead of Tech 3’s Xavi Vierge, who held his nerve in a titanic scrap for the position. Simon Corsi headed rookie Francesco Bagnaia in sixth, with Sandro Cortese, Brad Binder and Hafizh Syahrin completing the top 10.
Dynavolt’s Marcel Schrotter took his Suter to 11th, with Luca Marini, Jesko Raffin, Dominique Aegerter and Jorge Navarro taking the remaining points.
The early laps saw a high attrition rate, with a number of riders involving themselves in collisions. Takaaki Nakagami slid into the unfortunate Remy Gardner at Turn 1 on the first lap, whilst Fabio Quartararo wiped out Axel Pons a lap later.
Xavier Simeon suffered a heavy fall exiting Turn 10 and bumped his head, with Andrea Locatelli waving the white flag in the early stages due to illness.
