A bitter blow: German Intact team missed out on Moto3 victory at Misano by 0.021 seconds

With a very comfortable 97-point lead, World Championship leader Maximo Quiles (CF Moto Aspar) lined up for the San Marino Grand Prix at Misano; starting from fifth on the grid, he laid a solid foundation for the race. In practice, David Almansa from the Memmingen-based Liqui Moly Dynavolt Intact GP team was a clear step ahead of his rivals and had secured his sixth pole position of the season on Saturday.

His rivals agreed that Almansa was the favourite given his strong pace. Four riders were demoted on the starting grid after qualifying for ‘excessively slow riding’, including World Championship runner-up Alvaro Carpe (Red Bull KTM Ajo), who dropped from 8th to 21st on the grid.

Almansa got off to a superb start and took the lead, followed by Brian Uriarte, Joel Kelso, Valentin Perrone and Quiles. Carpe crashed on the first lap, as did the Austrian Leo Rammerstorfer and Nicola Carraro, though their incidents were unrelated.

After two laps, Almansa and Uriarte already had a lead of a few tenths of a second, with only Perrone, Quiles, Kelso, Matteo Bertelle and Rico Salmela within 1.5 seconds of them.

Almansa was unable to pull away, but by the halfway point of the 20-lap race, only Quiles and Uriarte were within a second of him. Behind them, there was a 2-second gap to a four-man chasing group.

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On lap 13, Almansa set a faster time than during his pole-setting lap, enabling him to pull half a second clear of the Uriarte/Quiles duo. The fact that the two were battling for second place played into Almansa’s hands. But once Quiles had got the better of Uriarte, he managed to close the gap on Almansa again.

With five laps to go, it was clear: the win would be decided between Almansa and Quiles. Quiles was right on his compatriot’s tail and pulled it off so perfectly in the final few corners that he caught Almansa off guard by half a bike’s length right up to the finish line, winning by a margin of 0.021 seconds! Uriarte took third place on the podium.