Jorge Martin moved back into the lead of the Moto3 world championship with victory in Sunday’s Dutch TT at Assen. The Spaniard took a narrow win over Aron Canet and Enea Bastianini while pre-race championship leader Marco Bezzecchi crashed out of fourth on the final lap, causing him to drop two points behind Martin.
Once again, Martin’s early tactic of streaking clear and dropping as many riders from the leading group as possible paid dividends, with only four riders able to give chase. Canet and Bastianini were the immediate challengers, joined by Bezzecchi, while CIP’s John McPhee also disputed the lead until an unfortunate crash at De Bult on the penultimate lap.
Martin had made the decisive break by this stage, opening up a 0.7s lead after passing Bezzecchi on lap 20, with the Italian’s KTM too far adrift to pick up a slipstream. From there, the PruestelGP rider was shuffled back to fourth by Canet and Bastianini before a front-end washout at Mandeveen on the very last lap saw him fail to pick up any points whatsoever.
Behind the leading trio, Jaume Masia took a career-best fourth after passing the sole remaining PruestelGP KTM of Jakub Kornfeil at the final chicane. Lorenzo Dalla Porta secured his best result since the opening round in Qatar with sixth ahead of Darryn Binder and Gabriel Rodrigo while Fabio Di Giannantonio missed the opportunity to take the championship himself after trailing home in ninth.
Moto3 Motul TT Assen: (Result)
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