Zarco Zooms To Barcelona Brilliance

Jun 14, 2015
3 min read

Johann Zarco takes his second win of the 2015 Moto2 World Championship after taking victory in the Catalan Grand Prix. The Frenchman was 5th by the end of the first lap and began clawing his way through the field. First on his hit list was Luis Salom on the eighth lap at turn four. With ten laps to go the Ajo Motorsport rider had found himself closing in on 3rd placed Sam Lowes and overtaking him into the first turn. A mistake by Tito Rabat at turn five a lap later allowed Zarco to join the leading duo, punishing Rins for running wide at the same turn on the penultimate lap. Heading into the final lap Zarco had closed the gap on Rabat and at turn five made a stunning block-pass on the Spaniard and got his head down to extend his lead in the standings to 40 points.

Rabat got the holeshot at the start and broke away with Sam Lowes in tow. A few moved for the lead from the Briton weren't enough to knock the EG 0,0 Marc VDS riders confidence and by the fifth lap he'd retaken the lead and began building a gap. A rare mistake cost him in his fight with Rins, but not for long. Zarco's move on the final lap rattled the Spaniard and at turn ten, in a last ditch attempt at the victory, ran too deep on the brakes dropping to 3rd.

Lowes found the Speed Up gobbling up its tyres once again and had to settle for yet another 4th place. His consistency has rewarded him with 3rd place in the standings, so the day was not a total disaster. Luis Salom completed a strong day for the Paginas Amarillas team in 5th.

Tom Luthi struggled quite a lot today and fell away rather quickly from the leaders, eventually finishing a lowly 6th place. Jonas Folger was just behind in 7th after a bad start. The German was forced to sit his AGR Kalex up and run off track at the first corner on the opening lap when Dominqiue Aegerter sat up as a result of Lowes steaming up his inside. Had it not been for that, the German would have definitely been fighting for the podium.

Franco Morbidelli recovered brilliantly from a bad qualifying to finish a very respectable 8th having come from 23rd. His race was not without incident however. He and AGR's Axel Pons collided on the opening lap and that sent the Spaniard into retirement at the fourth turn. The Italian was unscathed in the incident but at the time of writing he is under investigation by race direction.

Alex Marquez was also caught up that incident but stayed mounted and finsihed an unrepresentative 11th, whilst Xavier Simeon and Sandro Cortese were at the wrong place at the wrong time and their races were spent after just a 30-seconds.

Race Top 15:

1st Johann Zarco, Ajo Motorsport Kalex

2nd Alex Rins, Paginas Amarillas HP 40 Kalex

3rd Tito Rabat, EG 0,0 Marc VDS Kalex

4th Sam Lowes, Speed Up Racing

5th Luis Salom, Paginas Amarillas HP 40 Kalex

6th Tom Luthi, Derendinger Racing Interwetten Kalex

7th Jonas Folger, AGR Team Kalex

8th Franco Morbidelli, Italtrans Racing Team Kalex

9th Dominique Aegerter, Technomag Racing Interwetten

10th Lorenzo Baldassarri, Athina Forward Racing Team Kalex

11th Alex Marquez, EG 0,0 Marc VDS Kalex