2. Jonas Folger (Moto2)
One of the success stories of the 2014 Moto2 season has been the performance of the class rookies. In Texas, Maverick Vinales stunned everyone with victory in just his second race in the intermediate class while teammate Luis Salom stepped onto the podium in Argentina but in Spain, it was the turn of Jonas Folger and this performance was up there with his fellow Moto3 graduates.
Folger was so often the nearly man in the junior class last year with his KTM-powered Kalex continuously being outgunned by the factory KTM motorcycles and in his debut Moto2 campaign, the German is riding for one of the smaller teams in the series but that hasn’t stopped him making an impressive transition to four stroke machinery.
Folger was a solid top ten contender in each of the three flyaway races but in Jerez he enhanced his reputation still further by qualifying seventh, less than half a second off pole. An excellent start lifted him to fourth and after a first lap pass on Thomas Luthi, Jonas moved up to third which he would maintain until the finish, comfortably keeping Esteve Rabat, no less, at bay in the closing stages.
Such a magnificent result may lead Folger to revise his goals and expectations for the season and his AGR team will already be doing so. They hadn’t even had a top ten finish in Moto2 before this year.
(Photo Credit: MotoGP.com)
