Nicolas Terol left the Moto2 championship contenders trailing as he breezed to a dominant victory at Aragon, his second of the season. The Mapfre Aspar rider pulled out a comfortable lead over Esteve Rabat in the early laps and was never threatened with the main action taking place behind as title rivals Scott Redding and Pol Espargaro fought over the final podium position, the Spaniard eventually prevailing.
For Terol’s rivals, the best chance of halting his victory charge would come at the start but the former 125cc champion left Rabat and Espargaro for dead. The flying start came from Takaaki Nakagami on the second row who jumped up to second but the Japanese rider threw away any hopes of a maiden victory with two quick-fire mistakes on lap four, the second of which sent him down the escape road at turn ten and cost him fourteen seconds.
By this time, Scott Redding had made phenomenal progress from his fifth row start, gaining five places at the start before taking three more to complete the first lap in fifth. On lap three, the two Pons teammates Espargaro and Rabat swung the door wide open for Scott as they concentrated on battling each other and once Nakagami had slipped up, the Briton was up to second.
Rabat’s habit for picking up speed as the race unfolded saw him regain second on lap thirteen and the stage was set for the latest round in the Espargaro-Redding rivalry. With four laps to go, Pol put his plan into action by slipstreaming past on the back straight but as they rounded the final corner, Redding ducked back underneath the Pons Kalex, banging wheels on the way through. Two laps later and the Spaniard tried again, this time completing the move before arriving at turn sixteen and braving it out around the outside as Scott tried to hang on.
With the extra straight line speed working in his favour, Espargaro held on over the final lap to take third, gaining three points in his pursuit of the championship leader. Neither was a match for Terol though who cruised home to victory by 1.7 seconds from Rabat. Mika Kallio took fifth behind his Marc VDS teammate while Jordi Torres finished sixth on the second Aspar Suter.
Johann Zarco kept up his consistent season with seventh ahead of Julian Simon, Mattia Pasini and Sandro Cortese while Takaaki Nakagami recovered to eleventh after his early mishap.
