22. October 2012
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Two rounds before the finale, the first champion in world road motorcycle racing is now known. In the new Moto3 class, it’s Sandro Cortese on a KTM equipped with an Akrapovič exhaust system.
Malaysia and its shifting weather have yielded the first world champion in the Moto3 class. Even though third place would have been enough to clinch the title, Sandro Cortese (Red Bull KTM Ajo) fought until the final second—hundredth of a second, actually—cruising to the champion’s title with a victory. He finished just 0.028 seconds ahead of Malaysian racer Zulfahmi Khairuddin, and so two KTMs outfitted with Akrapovič exhaust systems crossed the finish line almost simultaneously.
The newly crowned Moto3 champion said after the race: “I can’t believe I’ve taken the title, and with a victory. I just waited and I wanted to finish in front of Salom and show everyone that even if Viñales has gone home I could still take the title with a win.”
The MotoGP class race was disrupted in the thirteenth lap by a downpour, and so the order just before that counted as the results. In the overall standings, the winner of the race, Dani Pedrosa, is now 23 points behind Jorge Lorenzo, who finished second this time around. Jorge, who rides a Yamaha factory bike with an Akrapovič exhaust system, had this to say about the wet outcome: “If we’d been riding at 20 km per hour, it’s easy to stay on the bike, but it’s very difficult to find the limit in these conditions. They made the right decision to stop the race; for us it was great because otherwise we might have finished on the ground and crashed.”
The lead racer in the Moto2 class, Marc Márquez, forfeited the chance to claim the championship title early this time by dropping out, and the victory went to Alex De Angelis, a member of the NGM Mobile Forward Racing team, whose exhaust systems are supplied by Akrapovič. In the overall count, Márquez remains in the lead (283 points) ahead of Pol Espargaró (235) and Andrea Iannone (188).
There are only two races to go before the end of the season: Australia on 28 October and the finale in Valencia on 11 November. We’d like to salute a new champion after each of these races—with the red scorpion on his exhaust system, of course. We’re keeping our fingers crossed!
Photo: Yamaha Racing, Gold and Goose