The first Moto2 winner of the season has been found in a race that will certainly be remembered by many, with Alonso López taking the victory and showing great strength in defending the first position despite the pressure from Barry Baltus, who thus achieved his first career podium in the world championships.
Áron Canet started from pole position after setting a time of 1:56.788s in Saturday’s qualifying and had Alonso López and Albert Arenas alongside him on the front row. It was 22ºC in Losail and everything seemed ready for the start of the first Moto2 race of the year, just like in Moto3, also with Pirelli.
Canet had a poor start and dropped to eighth place, with López moving to the front ahead of Manuel González and Arenas. Canet would recover three positions and reached third, while Tony Arbolino made his way to the podium positions. Meanwhile, Arenas fell to fifth, and Canet was now in fourth.
With two laps completed, López led by 0.104s over Canet, who had just overtaken González and… it didn’t stop there: shortly after, in the fourth sector of the third lap, Canet returned to the starting position and was the new leader and the author of the best lap so far in 1:57.661s.
López, already in the sixth lap, launched an attack and moved to the front, but the changes didn’t stop there, as González also climbed in the standings and reached second place. In a flash, Canet went from first to third.
Ai Ogura was on the rise, now in fourth place, at a stage of the race where another Japanese rider fell and thus “opened up” the range of riders going down, Ayumu Sasaki.
Arbolino seemed to be having problems and after being on the podium places, he was now losing positions and was tenth. Canet, higher up in third, had a slower pace than the competition but remained in third while López slightly increased the gap to González, now at 0.246s. Barry Baltus, already in the ninth lap, launched an attack on the podium places and even managed to overtake Canet, thus reaching third place. Arbolino continued the downward trend and was 13th at this moment. With ten laps completed, this was the top ten: In the following lap, after taking the lead López was “shaking” with the minimal difference to González, around 0.008s but shortly after González was surpassed by Baltus who thus reached second place. López regained ground but could not escape much and was 0.139s behind the Belgian. Arbolino was out of the points already in 18th, at a time when Sergio García had already surpassed Ogura, his teammate, and was fourth. The Spaniard was on the rise and threatened González’s position, with the overtaking happening shortly after and García was thus in the podium places and the “nightmare” did not end there, as #18 was also surpassed by Ogura.Baltus tried, tried, and tried but was unable to completely close the gap to López, who remained in the lead with 0.129s over the opponent, with this dropping several times to less than a tenth. García was third at 0.546s, and Ogura was further back at 1.175s. Three laps from the end, the top five looked like this:
