Jordi Torres eased to the first victory of his Grand Prix career after proving too strong for title challenger Pol Espargaro at the Sachsenring. The Aspar rider overcame long-time leader Espargaro before edging away with Pol pipped to second by Simone Corsi on the final lap. Championship leader Scott Redding endured his toughest race of the season so far and struggled to seventh.
Xavier Simeon had been the star of Saturday but it was clear Sunday wouldn’t be his day from the moment he crashed in an incident packed warm-up. The Belgian wouldn’t see his luck change in the afternoon as Espargaro beat him off the line with Torres and Corsi latching onto the back of the Pons Kalex. Italtrans rider Julian Simon had also got away with the leaders but Scott Redding had missed the chance to keep up as he completed the first lap in seventh.
Espargaro was setting a strong pace at the front which separated the top four from the rest of the field but Torres was looking decidedly calmer in the wheel of the no.40 and on lap nineteen, finally pulled out of the Kalex’s slipstream to take the lead at the Sachsen curve. Despite his lack of front-running experience in Grands Prix, Torres had played his tactics to perfection and pulled out half a second within a lap of taking the lead, extending it to 2.1s at the finish.
With Redding in damage limitation mode, Espargaro had to ensure he scored as many points as possible but Corsi wasn’t going to let him settle in second and halfway around the last lap, the Italian dived through to claim the best result of his Moto2 career, depriving Espargaro of four extra points in the process.
Simon couldn’t keep pace with the top three but held off the fast finishing Thomas Luthi and Alex De Angelis to secure fourth. Luthi and De Angelis had passed Scott Redding on their way up the order and the Briton would end up in the same position on the last lap as he had been on the first. Anthony West came through from the sixth row to finish eighth, knocking polesitter Xavier Simeon down to ninth with Dominique Aegerter completing the top ten.
The three other Brits in the field endured similarly disappointing days to Redding with none making it into the points. Gino Rea was the only other to see the chequered flag, albeit in 24th, while Danny Kent and Kyle Smith crashed out.
