Red Bull KTM’s Brad Binder claimed his second Moto3 win of his career, after he successfully held of the attacks from both Sky Racing’s Romano Fenati and Estrella Galicia’s Jorge Navarro at Le Mans.
It was a tight race with the leading trio dicing for the victory throughout, but in the end the South African clinched the lead on the penultimate lap and Fenati and Navarro were unable to make a move on the Red Bull racer, with the duelling pair having to settle for the remaining podium spots. With Binder’s back-to-back wins he has extended his lead by 24 points in the overall championship standings from Spanish rider, Navarro.
At first it was pole-setter Antonelli who got the hole-shot, only for Binder to go into the lead coming out of the Dunlop chicane. But with 22 laps to go Fenati went from third to first coming out of turn 1 and passed both Binder and Antonelli, but into turn 9 Binder went back into the front a lap later.
On lap twenty Navarro fought his way up to third at Chapel with Canet close behind. Meanwhile Antonelli made a mistake and went wide and fell back down to eighth. But three rotations later Fenati made a move on Binder to go into the lead, but the South African fought back only for the Italian to snatch back on lap seven.
Then with 15 laps to go in the Moto3 race Binder overtook Fenati on the penultimate corner to go back in front, but three laps later it was Fenati who made a move that stuck at Chapel, and Canet a lap later went into second at the Chicane and Binder fell back to third. On turn 13 Binder got the better of rookie Canet and went into second with eight laps remaining to the race. But that was only to last one rotation as Navarro went up to second.
With six laps remaining the leading foursome of Fenati. Navarro, Binder and Canet pulled away from the rest of the pack and had a three second gap on the rest. The Red Bull KTM rider was not giving up and went back to second coming out of the straight with only five laps left. On the penultimate lap Binder went into the lead and that is where he stayed until he crossed the finishing line.
Canet had a comfortable fourth place finish, with rookie Bulega taking fifth, followed by local rider Quartararo, Migno, Antonelli, Kornfeil and Locatelli completing the top ten. There were a few fallers; Jules Danilo crashed at Museum on only the first lap, but he was able to rejoin the race, but later returned to the pits. Also Darryn Binder crashed at turn 3 on lap nine, and was unhurt.
Scottish rider John McPhee was as high as nineteenth in the Moto3 race in France, but the youngster was pipped to the post by his Peugeot team-mate, Alexis Masbou on the final lap and was pushed back to twentieth at the flag.