Fermín Aldeguer is right at home and today at the Spanish GP he won the Moto2 race, on a very special day for Joe Roberts who is the new championship leader, making him the first American to top the championship after Nicky Hayden.
Manuel González made the best start and moved to the front straight away, but soon lost the lead to Fermín Aldeguer, before returning to the front of the race. Sergio García was third, Jake Dixon fourth and Albert Arenas fifth.
Senna Agius was the first to retire from the race after being hit by Barry Baltus, and shortly afterwards it was Bo Bendsneyder’s turn to go down at turn 13.
And the crashes continued, now with Xavier Artigas also going down.
If the race continued at a good pace at the front, with Aldeguer putting the pressure on and even getting to the front of the race, the truth was that González once again gave the manoeuvre back to the #54, who will be in MotoGP in 2025, and returned to the lead of the race.
Changes at the front! 🔄@Aldeguer54 gets into P1 but @18ManuGonzalez says no! 🤯#SpanishGP 🇪🇸 pic.twitter.com/tK22bjYSzG
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) April 28, 2024
This race continued to be full of crashes, with Dennis Foggia also falling, and he was joined by Darryn Binder.
The front duo were at a higher level and fighting hard, and it was the Beta Tools SpeedUp rider who returned to the lead of the race, and now at least for the time being, prevented González from being able to immediately (almost) return the manoeuvre.
Aldeguer quickly began to try to get away, and he was succeeding: with 11 laps completed he now had a 0.751s lead over González, García remained in third position, Joe Roberts was fourth and Arenas fifth.
Dixon meanwhile was another driver to crash, again at turn 13.
That was the top ten, with the race almost halfway over:
The disaster continued for Italtrans, now faced with yet another crash, that of Diogo Moreira and at the same turn 13, which continued to add up to ‘victims’.
Roberts was on the attack and beat García to move provisionally into the lead of the championship, with precisely one point more than #3. In front was Aldeguer, 1s ahead of González, 1.045s to be precise.
Alex Escrig crashed and guess where? Precisely: at turn 13, with his motorbike ‘taking on a life of its own’ and almost doing damage:
Aldeguer was in great form, gaining more and more time on González, with Roberts in third and increasingly certain that he would end the day as Moto2 championship leader, winking at Trackhouse Racing.
And Roberts’ life just kept getting better! The American was on the attack and was up to second after beating González. As he had done with Aldeguer, González tried to respond straight away, but the OnlyFans American Racing Team rider successfully defended himself and held onto second place for the time being.
The race was drawing to a close and only a disaster could prevent Aldeguer from winning, but before he did, Jaume Masiá also went down, right at the end.
It was over and a new winner this year, with Aldeguer taking victory in Jerez!