Sunday, November 3, 2024, 07:50
| Updated 1:51 p.m.
Celestino Vietti dominated from start to finish a Moto2 race marked by extreme heat conditions. He escaped from the start and only a mistake on the fifth lap, when he was about to crash and saw how his pursuers were in his wake, altered what seemed like a victory that was already written. The Italian had missed the last two grand prix due to injury. A fall in free practice at Phillip Island caused a fracture in his left collarbone that had been left in the dry dock. He arrived at the Sepang circuit without the certainty that he would be able to compete in the grand prix and ended up on top of the podium, after hours of physio after each session.
Vietti’s was his third victory of the year, as many as the champion Ogura and the runner-up Canet, but the irregularity has kept him away from the fight for the championship. The Italian was accompanied on the podium by two riders who had never stepped foot in the intermediate category, but had done so on many occasions in Moto3, Jorge Navarro and Izan Guevara. Both with their own story of improvement.
The Valencian was racing in Sepang as a substitute for the American Joe Roberts. A couple of years ago he left a championship to which he has only returned occasionally as a ‘wild card’ or as a replacement for an injured driver, always demonstrating that he has enough level to be a World Championship driver. In Malaysia he completed his best weekend in the intermediate category, with pole on Saturday and second position on Sunday. And for the moment he was on the verge of hunting down Vietti, although the Italian was unreachable on this track and settled for a valuable podium.
Behind him, third place seemed destined for Jake Dixon, who was going from strength to strength and faced the penultimate lap with a clear advantage. However, a mistake by the Briton, who cut in the middle of the straight thinking that the race was over, gave that podium to his teammate Izan Guevara. The Spaniard, Moto3 champion in 2022, had not had an easy adaptation to Moto2 and after two years of suffering he achieved a podium that, in addition, sounded like a farewell since at the end of the year he will leave the team of his entire life, the Aspar Team trying to get his career back on track.
Another leading Spaniard was Marcos Ramírez, who spent almost the entire race in podium positions but finished without tires and in sixth position. And also Arón Canet, eighth, who, despite not having his best race of the year, that result confirmed him as Moto2 runner-up.
