Lorenzo Baldassarri defeated Jake Dixon to win a calamitous opening Moto2 VirtualGP encounter as all but two riders crashed out during the race.
Pole-man Baldassarri got a good start to lead into Turn 1, escaping a four-bike crash behind that saw Marcel Schrotter, Bo Bensneyder, Jorge Navarro and Marcos Ramirez all fly off into the gravel trap on the outside of the first turn.
Luca Marini soon snatched the lead away from the Italian though, forcing him to dive back past at the Pedrosa hairpin to re-establish his leading position.
Marini wasn’t done though, and attempted to dive back past the Pons racer at the following left-handed sweeper of Turn 8, clipping Baldassarri and going down in the process.
Dixon was the next to attack Baldassarri, pushing him wide at the next corner to move his Petronas SRT machine into the lead.
Baldassarri immediately began to close back in on the Brit, passing him to regain the lead at Turn 5 on the following tour.
He then began to edge away, consistently building his advantage over Dixon across the rest of the eight lap race to win by just over three seconds.
Bensneyder recovered well from his Turn 1 crash to close out the podium positions, unable to make much of a dent in the two men in front across the race distance but comfortably clear of fourth-placed Marini.
Jorge Martin had a relatively quiet race as he secured fifth, while Marcel Schrotter managed to reclaim sixth from Canet as a result of the Aspar rider’s larger track-limits penalty.
Canet had run third early on before being taken down at Pedrosa by Bensneyder, forcing him to spend the rest of his event battling Navarro-a battle he would ultimately win as the factory Speed Up man crashed late on his way to eighth.
Marcos Ramirez finished a distant ninth, while Enea Bastianaini suffered a horror contest to complete the field in tenth.
