Zarco Victorious In Shortened Moto2 Race

Oct 11, 2015
3 min read

Newly crowned Moto2 World Champion Johann Zarco won his seventh race of the season at Motegi to celebrate in style.

The race itself was shortened as a result of heavy rain at the circuit in the morning causing delays to the schedule as the medical helicopter was unable to fly. Once race organisers confirmed road access to the local helicopters, they then halved the warm-up to just 10 minutes and reduced the race distance to 15 laps.

Johann Zarco started from pole position but was headed into turn one by second place starter Jonas Folger. Rins dropped to 5th behind Nakagami and Syahrin fell to 8th from 6th on the grid. Folger and Zarco pulled away immediately from the rest of the field with an opening lap lad of almost two seconds from Luthi.

Home favourite Takaaki Nakagami overtook Thomas Luthi for third place before Luthi then crashed out from 4th a lap later but rejoined a long way down the field. British rider Sam Lowes struggled early on with tyre performance and was overtaken regularly by other riders and soon found himself runnin 11th having started from 4th on the grid. At the front, Zarco closed the gap to a tenth of a second to leader Folger and eventually made his move on lap five.

Joshua Hook, substituting for the injured Dominique Aegerter this race, unfortunately crashed out too having shown promising potential throughout the weekend. There was also a fall for home hero Takaaki Nakagami from third place. Ricky Cardus had a strong race and challenged throughout the 15 laps for a top 10 finish along with Rins, Cortese, Corsi, Shah and Syahrin. Shah managed to progress into an impressive third place until he was chased down in the closing laps by Sandro Cortese. Shah had no answer for the Italian's pace and eventually was passed by Cortese for third with a couple of laps remaining.

Alex Rins started to struggle with tyre wear and dropped several places to the lower part of the top 10 whilst Luis Salom crashed out from 10th. Zarco continued to pull away to a comfortable three second lead over Folger whilst Alex Marquez slid off his bike from 5th. Lowes made a couple of overtakes to get back into 8th place at the end of the race.

However, the race was comfortably won by Johann Zarco ahead of Jonas Folger by the finish by 4.5 seconds. Cortese took his first podium of the season in third ahead of a thoroughly impressive trio of rides from Shah fourth, Syahrin fifth and Cardus sixth. Simone Corsi finished seventh followed by Lowes, Schrotter and Krummenacher completing the top 10.

Champion Zarco showed exactly why he won the title yet again with this dominant victory and will return in 2016 to defend his crown. He is the first Frenchman to win the intermediate championship since Olivier Jacque in 2000 and is the most successful French rider. After the race, Zarco performed his regular victory back-flip as part of his title celebrations but this time he emphatically performed the flip from his bike.

Moto2 Japanese Grand Prix Race Result Top 10:

WINNER - Johann ZARCO, 31m17.900s

SECOND - Jonas FOLGER, +4.505s

THIRD - Sandro CORTESE, +15.433s

4th - Azlan SHAH, +17.348s

5th - Hafizh SYAHRIN, +22.858s

6th - Ricky CARDUS, +24.970s

7th - Simone CORSI, +25.759s

8th - Sam LOWES, +27.024s

9th - Marcel SCHROTTER, +27.485s

10th - Randy KRUMMENACHER, +28.062s

Full Moto2 Race result available here: http://resources.motogp.com/files/results/2015/JPN/Moto2/RAC/Classification.pdf?v1_ddbc46b3