Aron Canet wins breathtaking shortened Moto3 race

Aron Canet (Estrella Galicia 0,0 Honda NSF250RW) won a breathtaking and shortened Moto3 race, fighting his way through from 16th on the grid, the result of a strategic error during qualifying. The brilliant 17-year-old Spaniard led an all-Honda top three, with Enea Bastianini (Estrella Galicia 0,0 Honda NSF250RW) and Jorge Martin (Del Conca Gresini Racing Moto3 Honda NSF250RW) joining him on the podium. This is the ninth time from the first 12 races that riders of Honda’s NSF250RW have monopolized the podium, with just 0.111 seconds between the top three today!

This race won’t be forgotten for a long while, with positions changing constantly around Silverstone’s high-speed curves. At half-distance the top 17 were covered by just 1.9 seconds and when the red flags came out the top 11 were separated by 1.7 seconds. The race was stopped during the last lap, after Juanfran Guevara (KTM) and Bo Bendsneyder (KTM) fell together. Bendsneyder was uninjured, Guevara battered and bruised. Positions were therefore taken back to the previous lap, when Canet was ahead.

Bastianini made it a team one-two with second place, 0.06s seconds behind his team-mate, the Italian’s first podium of the year. Like Canet, Martin also recovered from adversity to claim the final podium place, despite being run off the track at the first corner.

Numerous riders took the lead during the race. World Championship leader Joan Mir (Leopard Racing Honda NSF250RW) made it to the front of several occasions, finally placed fifth, less than half a second behind Canet. Mir now leads the World Championship by 64 points with six races remaining.

Mir’s team-mate Livio Loi (Leopard Racing Honda NSF250RW) also led the race. He finished sixth, six-hundredths of a second behind Mir. And pole-starter Romano Fenati (Marinelli Rivacold Snipers Honda NSF250RW) led the first lap, the Italian finishing in seventh, less than seven tenths behind the winner.

Fabio Di Giannantonio (Del Conca Gresini Racing Moto3 Honda NSF250RW) wasn’t so fortunate, he ran off the track twice while disputing the lead to end up tenth, a fraction of a second ahead of Tatsuki Suzuki (SIC58 Squadra Corse Honda NSF250RW), the seventh Honda man in the top ten.

Kaito Toba (Honda Team Asia Honda NSF250RW) had to withdraw from the race following a big fall in warm-up. Yesterday the 17-year-old Japanese rider had achieved his best grid position in 12th place.

MotoGP now returns to the Continent for the San Marino and Aragon Grands Prix before embarking on its annual flyway adventure to the Asia-Pacific region, with races in Japan, Australia and Malaysia. The season concludes at Valencia in Spain.

Aron Canet

“I'm very happy with this third win of the season. We are improving in many ways and I am consistently riding in the front group. We had a difficult race ahead because we started from 16th, but I was able to gain positions until making contact with the front-runners. I studied the riders in the group and Jorge Martin was the one with the best pace, but we made the situation work for us in the end.”

Enea Bastianini

“I feel very good because finishing on the podium was a goal for the whole team, and today we achieved it. We have worked hard in the last three races but without a result to show for it, and today it was very nice to get on the podium. It was a very difficult race because there were many riders fighting in the same group. In the end I saw that little by little, as the fuel tank emptied, I could gain places and reach the front group to fight for the podium. On the last lap I saw that I had a chance to attack for the win; even though I didn’t get the victory, it's great to be back on the podium.”

Jorge Martin

“We knew we had something more today and the result was not what we were hoping for. After a difficult start I had a good comeback and my pace was great. A real shame about the red flag, because we had a strategy with my telemetry guy to be third starting the last lap. It all went according to plan, except for the red flag. Still, we took a podium finish. Now we have two weeks to rest and then Misano, where we want to and must do better.”