Three races in Spain, three wins for the Spaniard, and now a big gap in the World Championship
The Autosolar GASGAS Aspar Team’s Izan Guevara has moved 33 points clear at the top of the Moto3™ World Championship with an all-the-way victory at the Gran Premio Animoca Brands de Aragon. The Spaniard gapped Sterilgarda Husqvarna Max’s Ayumu Sasaki late in the 19-lap encounter at MotorLand Aragon while Red Bull KTM Ajo rookie Daniel Holgado clinched what became a lonely third place. On the other Autosolar GASGAS Aspar Team entry, Sergio Garcia collected just three points as he finished 13th, and it is a big deficit he now faces to his team-mate at the top of the table.
Guevara had qualified on pole position and he got the holeshot when the lights went out, leading fellow front row starters Sasaki and Holgado to the first corner. They quickly gapped the chasing pack and were nearly two seconds clear when John McPhee (Sterilgarda Husqvarna Max) slipped underneath Tatsuki Suzuki (Leopard Racing) to take over fourth position on Lap 4 at Turn 4, which made room for Ivan Ortola (Angeluss MTA Team) to relieve the Japanese rider of fifth also. Seventh at that point was Deniz Öncü (Red Bull KTM Tech3), from David Muñoz (BOE Motorsports), Adrian Fernandez (Red Bull KTM Tech3), and Garcia, who had qualified 12th.
Guevara, Sasaki, and Holgado continue to creep away as a group of three while McPhee, Öncü, Suzuki, and Ortola chopped and changed in the battle for fourth position. Garcia was shuffled back outside the top 10 when Jaume Masia (Red Bull KTM Ajo) took him wide at Turn 1, but had climbed to eighth and was closing the gap to the aforementioned quartet after half a dozen laps of racing. Dennis Foggia (Leopard Racing), on the other hand, had slipped to 15th from sixth on the grid by that point and did not look like making a recovery anytime soon.
A ferocious battle for fourth
With 10 laps completed and nine to go, the top three ran as you were, but with their gap over the rest more than five seconds by then. The battle just behind them was seriously heating up, however, with Öncü fourth from Muñoz, Suzuki, Fernandez, Ortolo, Diogo Moreira (MT Helmets – MSI), Masia, Garcia, and McPhee in 12th. Moments earlier, Garcia had been running as high as seventh but ran wide when he attacked Ortola at Turn 5 and lost…