Marc VDS Racing’s Tito Rabat won the Moto2 race at Mugello, extending his lead in the championship standings by 22 points. The Spaniard battled through to take the spoils from rookie's Pon’s Luis Salom and AGR’s Jonas Folger, who completed the rostrum. Speed Up’s Sam Lowes ended the afternoon in eighth place.
Lowes had a poor start and got swallowed up and dropped back to sixth after a front row start. Folger led from the opening lap with Salom and Rabat hot on his heels. With 18 laps remaining the very pink machine of Lowes slipped back to tenth, but was able to redeem himself with a pass on Morbidelli.
After seven laps Folger and Salom pulled away from Rabat, and the series leader had Aegerter to contend with. Pasini crashed and lost the front end at the track while in fifth at Scareria, pushing Lowes up to seventh.
With 12 laps to go Rabat was setting the fastest laps of the race and closed the gap on Folger and Salom by a second. But four laps later Salom went into the lead getting the best of out the slip stream of Folger on the home straight to head the trio. Rabat also had the pace going into San Donato and went into second, with Folger dropping back to third.
Meanwhile further down the field there was an almightily battle for fourth between Corsi, Kallio, Aegerter and Zarco, with Corsi having the slight edge over the other three riders. Lowes was just off the pace of the quartet, and remained in eighth place with three laps to go – and that is where the Derby-based rider stayed until the chequered flag appeared. Vinales and Morbidelli rounded off the top ten.
Elsewhere Rabat headed the leading trio - going into the lead over Salom on the 19th rotation of the circuit, and set a new lap record of 1’52.587 in the process. After that pass Rabat was uncatchable and took the victory from Salom and Folger.
Corsi narrowly snatched fourth, but there was a photo finish for fifth between Aegerter and Kallio, with the Swiss rider getting the advantage over the Finnish lad to round up the top five. AGT’s Gino Rea ended the day in 21st place.
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