MOTOGP
FIM MOTOGP WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
ROUND 18 / NOVEMBER 10-12, 2017
RICARDO TORMO CIRCUIT / VALENCIA, SPAIN
P86
Moto2
Another race for bragging rights
only, the top five title positions
settled. Not that bragging rights
are unimportant, and they meant
enough for champion Franco
Morbidelli to mount a strong
attack on his pole-starting VDS
Kalex teammate
Alex Marquez, after the young-
er rider took off in the lead.
Morbidelli pushed ahead after
two laps, by when third-qualifier
Mattia Pasini (Italtrans Kalex) had
tumbled—remounting only to fall
again a bit later.
This left Miguel Oliveira and
Red Bull KTM teammate Brad
Binder third and fourth, the lead-
ing quartet pulling clear as Domi-
nique Aegerter (Kiefer Suter)
proved a bit of a block in sixth.
Morbidelli was worried about
Oliveira's late race pace.
"I pushed very hard, and as
long as I saw on my board Mar-
quez was behind, I could pull
away. Then I saw it was Oliveira,
and I thought—oh," he said.
He'd set fastest lap on the sixth
and seventh, but it was not by
enough.
The Portuguese rider's first
attack had been repulsed on
lap eight. On lap 10, he was in
front, and directly pulling clear.
The gap to Morbidelli was two
seconds.
Marquez had run into grip
problems, and a couple of laps
later Binder was also past him.
Oliveira was relentlessly taking
tenths out of Morbidelli every
lap. On the 16th, he had halved
the gap; on the 20th he was
on his tail. And on the 22nd, he
pounced, pushing inside at the
apex of Turn Four. The bikes
touched as Morbidelli tried to
resist, but it was hopeless, and
once past, the orange KTM
pulled steadily clear to win a
third race in a row by better than
two seconds.
"It's surreal," said Oliveira. "To
win the last three races makes us
very confident for next season."
Binder was another two sec-
onds down on Morbidelli, unable
to repeat the one-two of Australia
and Malaysia. It might have been
different, he explained, but in
the early stages, "I was having
spasms in my left foot and hav-
ing trouble changing gear," he
said. Once that got better, it was
too late to close up.
KTM's warning to Kalex was
clear; but the hitherto dominant
German chassis took the next
