Albert Arenas secured his first Moto3 win of the season in Thailand for the Angel Nieto team with a last lap pass on Lorenzo Dalla Porta.
Arenas moved into the lead as Estrella Galicia rookie Alonso Lopez ran wide from the lead with just a few corners remaining, allowing Arenas and championship leader Dalla Porta through.
Dalla Porta-looking certain to extend to title advantage with chief rival Aron Canet out- then made a last-corner effort to snatch the lead, but ran wide and allowed Arenas back underneath to lead the field on the run to the line.
Dalla Porta took second and stretches out his points lead to 22 with four races remaining, while Lopez held on to secure his maiden Moto3 podium finish.
Arguably the biggest talking point of the race though was the retirement of Canet, who was the victim of a harsh move from CIP Racing’s Darryn Binder.
The South African tried to dive down the inside of several riders at the final corner, but moved across in the braking zone and clipped the front wheel of Canet next to him.
This caused Canet to lose control of his KTM and clatter into the innocent John McPhee and Tatsuki Suzuki for good measure.
The incident forced the retirement of both McPhee and Suzuki, while Canet eventually rejoined the race several laps down with all hope of points lost.
Binder received a ride-through penalty for his actions, and eventually crossed the line a lowly 20th.
Marcos Ramirez avoided a final lap clash between Andrea Migno and Ai Ogura-who ended their races in the Turn 1 gravel trap after Migno made an over-optimistic lunge on the Japanese rider-to take fourth, while Dennis Foggia closed out the top five for the VR46 squad.
Poleman Celestino Vietti came home a relatively disappointing sixth on the second VR46 KTM ahead of Kaito Toba and Prustel GP pairing Jakub Kornfeil and Stefano Nepa, who secures only his second points scoring result of the year.
Raul Fernandez rounded out the top ten on the second Nieto machine just ahead of a recovering Tony Arbolino, who dropped to 20th just past mid-distance as he battled to refit a loose glove.
