Estoril MotoGP: Bautista takes impressive 250 win

Alvaro Bautista has won the Portugeuse 250GP in Estoril after taking an astonishing lead.

Marco Simonchelli took the hole-shot but Bautista got past on the first time down the back straight and kept the lead to the flag.

Simonchelli had a lonely race in second place sitting 4 seconds down on the leader with the battle for third taking place a good four seconds further back.

But things soon heated up as Mika Kallio broke free of the chasing group to catch Simonchelli on the last lap.

Kallio took one and a half seconds out of Simonchelli in one lap and came on to the start finish straight almost along side him. But Simonchelli almost took both of them out of the race when he swerved to the side in an attempt to block. The collision forced Kallio to react and kept him back in third.

Further back the battle for fourth was lively throughout the race but it was Thomas Luthi that impressed the most, closing the gap on the duelling pack and passing them all to take fourth place.

Hiroshi Aoyama caused a bit of a stir in his attempt to take fourth when he dived under Mattia Pasini and sent him sliding off the track. Pasini got back on and tried to restart the race but didn’t realise he had no front break lever and went piling in  to the gravel at the next corner at full speed. The crash was fast enough to snap his wingarm, but thankfully left him unhurt.

Eugene Laverty finally got the new parts that he had been waiting on and got his best finish this season fighting from 21st up to 15th position by the end of the race.

Final Positions:

Alvaro BAUTISTA 
Marco SIMONCELLI 7.05
Mika KALLIO 7.063
Thomas LUTHI 12.998
Hiroshi AOYAMA 14.666
Yuki TAKAHASHI 18.498
Julian SIMON 26.812
Hector BARBERA 28.012
Hector FAUBEL 28.288
Lukas PESEK 36.966
Aleix ESPARGARO 38.296
Alex BALDOLINI 52.07
Ratthapark 13.303
Federico SANDI 17.592
Eugene LAVERTY 21.363
Karel ABRAHAM 26.355
Manuel POGGIALI 27.438
Imre TOTH 1 lap
Doni Tata PRADITA 1 lap
DNF 
Roberto LOCATELLI 
Mattia PASINI 
Russel GOMEZ 
Fabrizio LAI 
Alex DEBON 
Ho Wan CHOW