Takaaki Nakagami makes his Moto2 World Championship debut at Assen

The Moto2 World Championship was the next to take to the Assen circuit for the eighth race of the 2016 season of the motorcycle world championship, in conditions far more difficult than those faced by the riders in the Moto3 race.

At the start of the Luthi race, the pole-sitter went all out and took the first position, followed by Aegerter, Nakagami, Zarco, Lowes and Morbidelli. The leading riders swapped positions several times, with Morbidelli making a change of pace to break up the group, leaving Luthi and Aegerter behind, and going off with Zarco and Nakagami.

But Morbidelli couldn’t keep up the pace and was caught again by the group, with Nakagami leading and already holding a good gap over his rivals. With ten laps to go Nakagami was first on track and set the fastest lap (1’38.055); his lead had already grown to 2.3 seconds. Second was Zarco, who had overtaken a revitalised Morbidelli while Luthi rode in the slipstream of both. With six laps to go there was total chaos, and the water flag was shown on track, so everything was reduced and we did not see the riders being as aggressive.

With two laps to go the red flag was shown due to the rain, and the race was declared finished as more than two-thirds of it had been completed. Thus, Nakagami took his first victory in the World Championship, with Zarco and Morbidelli filling the rest of the podium. Lowes 4th, Baldassarri 5th, Rins 6th, Corsi 7th, Márquez 8th, Aegerter 9th and Folger 10th. The rest of our riders finished Simón 16th, Vierge 17th, Viñales 21st, Edgar Pons 23rd. In the provisional championship standings Rins and Zarco are co-leaders with 126 points, followed by Lowes with 121.

Source | MotoGP official website