Izan Guevara sprinted away from his rivals in the closing laps of the Catalan Moto3 encounter to score his second victory of 2022 ahead of rookie David Munoz.
Having shown to be one of the men to beat alongside Dennis Foggia across the weekend at the Circuit de Barcelona Catalunya, Guevara tussled with the likes of the Italian, GasGas team-mate Sergio Garcia as well as 16-year old sensation Munoz in the large lead group, made up of well over ten riders for the most part.
Guevara’s task was made slightly easier as Foggia was forced to retire after just over half-a-dozen tours as his Leopard Honda sustained a broken chain, leaving him to notch up a second straight non-points finish.
With around a quarters distance remaining Guevara attempted to break away from team-mate Garcia, with Munoz and the sister Leopard entry of Tatsuki Suzuki in turn breaking away from the remaining pack.
Having crafted a six-tenth advantage, Guevara all but had victory secured after Garcia had a small bobble at Turn 5 on the penultimate circulation, the Spaniard left with over a second over his pursuers heading onto the final lap.
This left Garcia to try and defend his runners-up spot from the attacking Munoz and Suzuki, the series leader being dumped to fourth at Turn 1 as the final tour began.
The trio tussled the entire way around the final lap, Munoz securing second with a daring dive at Turn 10 as Guevara flew over the line to score victory by 1.9 seconds over the Boe SKX pilot in only his second Moto3 world championship race from a remarkable 20th on the grid.
Suzuki meanwhile managed to also slide past Garcia at the final corner to complete the rostrum positions, while Deniz Oncu rounded off the top five.
Carlos Tatay utilised the harder-compound rear tyre to fight through to sixth across the climactic stages ahead of MAX Racing’s John McPhee, with Jaume Masia dropping to eighth in the end having been a part of the rostrum battle only a few lap prior to the finish.
Riccardo Rossi ended up ninth for the SIC58 squad, with Adrian Fernandez finishing off the top ten.
David Salvador – who is subbing for the injured Ayumu Sasaki at MAX Racing – saw a potential top five result lost after being rear-ended by Ryusei Yamanaka at Turn 10 at around mid-distance, the duo both going down along with an innocent Daniel Holgado, who was taken out by an incident not of his own making for the second straight weekend.
Garcia’s points lead has now been reduced from 28 to 16 over Guevara heading to the Sachsenring in Germany in two weeks time, with Masia now a distant 54 in-arrears in third overall.
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