Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/739653
ROAD RACE FIM MOTOGP WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP ROUND 15 / OCTOBER 16, 2016 TWIN RING MOTEGI / MOTEGI, JAPAN P96 Moto3 A first-corner crash took some of the sting out of the first race of the day, but a thrilling battle on the last corners of the final lap made up for it. The big victim of the tangle barely 100 yards from the start was the ever-luckless Jorge Navarro. The EG Honda rider touched Joan Mir and fell under the wheels of Brno winner John McPhee (SaxoPrint Peugeot) and RBA KTM rider Gabriel Ro- drigo. All were out of the race, Navarro suffering a shoulder dislocation, and a bitter blow to his hopes of second overall. Team Asia Honda rider Hiroko Ono had topped qualifying, but a three-spot penalty put him on row two and handed a first pole start to Andrea Migno (SKY VR46 KTM), from new champion Brad Binder (Red Bull KTM) and Enea Bastianini (Gresini Honda). Migno got the jump off the line, but before the end of the lap Binder was in front, and he would stay there almost all the way. Bastianini was with him, and—a big surprise—Mahindra's Pecco Bagnaia, from 12th on the grid. So was Migno, Ono, and after five laps, also Nicolo Bulega (SKY VR46 KTM), in a breakaway group of six. Bastianini was the strongest of the pursuers, Bagnaia ultimately the weakest, dropping out of the gang with six laps to go. The others scrapped and scraped at each other, awaiting the last-lap showdown. By the time they got there, Binder had tried to escape, but Bastianini had closed the gap. It was a two-man fight, with one result. The Italian waited until the 90-degree corner, third from last, outbraked Binder, and led over the line by 0.017 of a sec- ond for his first win of the year. Said a cheerful defeated champion: "That was a perfect race for me, until three laps from the end." Third appeared to have been settled a little earlier in the lap. Ono had led at the start under severe pressure from Bulega, then Migno forced past his com- patriot only to touch Ono's back wheel. Migno crashed, Bulega lost crucial yards, and Ono took a home podium, his career-best result. Then came heartbreak, as the Japanese rider was disqualified because his bike-rider combi- nation was below the minimum weight, promoting Bulega to third. Behind them, Phillip Oettl (Schedl KTM) had fought his way back through a midfield gang after problems in the early laps, and escaped from his last victim Di Giannantonio (Gresini Honda) for an eventual fourth, while a fading Bagnaia only narrowly clung on to sixth from RW Honda rider Livio Loi. Fabio Enea Bastianini (33) passed Brad Binder late in the Moto3 race to take the win.