Pecco Bagnaia won his seventh race of the season in Buriram to extend his lead atop the Moto2 World Championship standings to 28 points after his teammate Luca Marini edged out title rival Miguel Oliveira on the final lap.
Pole sitter Lorenzo Baldassarri got the perfect start and was the early leader, however it wasn’t long before the two title protagonists moved past the Italian. Brad Binder soon followed Bagnaia and Oliveira through as the front four started to pull away from Marini and Fabio Quartararo.
Bagana looked loose on his special liveried Sky VR46 bike and Binder soon went under the Italian and the KTM duo looked set to close the gap to Bagnaia in the World Championship.
The front four then became a three as Baldassarri crashed out, leaving the front three to fight between them. Bagnaia soon moved back to second and wasted little time in taking the lead off his title rival with thirteen laps to go.
Bagnaia slowly put time into Oliveira and once the gap was over a second, the Italian managed the gap at the front and held on the win.
Behind the World Championship leader, Marini started finding a lot of pace with five laps to go and he soon closed in on the KTM duo. The tall Italian took third from Binder with just three laps remaining and on the final lap he managed to pass Oliveira to not only secure a second position for himself, but also help his teammate by taking an additional five points off the Portuguese rider.
Bagnaia’s lead of 28 points with four races left, means he can finish second every race to Oliveira now and still win the World Championship.
Binder held on to finish in fourth position, five seconds ahead of Quartararo who was fifth. Quartararo himself was a further five seconds ahead of Mattia Pasini. Iker Lecuona was seventh with Tetusta Nagashima, Andrea Locatelli and Simeone Corsi rounding out the top ten.
Xavi Vierge was eleventh with Remy Gardener nearly two seconds behind the Spaniard in twelfth. Joe Roberts was thirteenth with Bo Bendsneyder and Niki Tuuli rounding out the point scorers.
