Marc VDS man Alex Marquez held off Tom Luthi to take his third win in a row, gifting him the lead in the Moto2 World Championship as previous leader Lorenzo Baldassarri crashed out at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

Starting from the second row, the outside of the second row, Marquez was pushed wide, literally, by Fabio Di Giannantonio in the opening corner, leaving the Spaniard with work to do. Unlike his brother, Marquez seemed to get his head down and methodically push through, first picking off Sam Lowes and then Di Giannantonio. He then passed pole-sitter Augusto Fernandez and edged past Luthi.

Despite the best efforts of the Swiss rider, Luthi decided that he couldn’t stay with Marquez and settled for twenty World Championship points rather than risking it all chasing, holding off Jorge Navarro on the final lap.

Navarro will be ruining his poor start, in spite of a home podium. The SpeedUp man has superb pace at the end of the race, however he just couldn’t reel in Luthi in.

Augusto Fernandez couldn’t capitalise on his pole position, having to settle for fourth place, just two seconds behind Navarro. Enea Bastianini was a lonely fifth place on his Italtrans bike.

Luca Marini was sixth, coming out on top of an intense battle with Marcel Schrotter and Xavi Vierge who were seventh and eighth places respectively. Sam Lowes couldn’t capitalise on his front row start and struggled in the early stages, bringing his Gresini bike home in ninth with Tetsuta Nagashima rounding out the top ten.

Brad Binder was eleventh on another miserable weekend for KTM, with Andrea Locatelli, Nico Bugela, Simone Corsi and 2018 Moto3 World Champion Jorge Martin rounding out the point scorers in fifteenth place.

Marquez now leads the World Championship from Luthi by seven points, with Navarro a further fifteen behind. Baldassarri is now fourth, a point behind Navarro with the top four covered by 24 points.