Misano Moto2 & Moto3: Quiles Produces a Masterclass as González Grabs His Chance
Maximo Quiles wins a Moto3 race by 0.021 seconds with a piece of exquisite final-corner racecraft, before Turn One carnage clears the way for Manuel González to reassert control of the Moto2 World Championship.
Misano's junior classes produced two very different lessons in how to win a motorcycle race on Sunday.
In Moto3, Maximo Quiles spent 20 laps working out exactly how to beat a rider who had barely put a wheel wrong.
In Moto2, Manuel González watched the entire front row fall over at Turn One and presumably thought Christmas had come rather early this year.
Both opportunities still needed taking.
Quiles did it with one of the smartest pieces of racecraft we've seen all season. González did it by taking the enormous gift presented to him and then riding sufficiently well that nobody was allowed to ask for it back.
Moto3: Quiles Does Something Rather Special
There are close finishes, and then there are finishes that tell you rather more about the bloke who won them.
Maximo Quiles beat David Almansa at Misano by 0.021 seconds. On paper, that's another Moto3 photo finish to add to the enormous pile of Moto3 photo finishes.
Watch how he did it, though, and it becomes something else entirely.
Almansa was superb. Starting from pole, he led from the opening corner and spent 20 laps doing almost everything required to win a Grand Prix. He set the pace, stretched the leading group, repeatedly forced Quiles and Brian Uriarte to ride at the limit to stay with him and, when the race finally distilled itself down to Almansa versus Quiles, refused to crack.
The particularly brutal bit is that Almansa didn't really get the last corner wrong either.
Quiles had spent the race looking ominously comfortable through Misano's fast third sector and, by the final lap, everybody knew an attack was coming. Almansa knew it too. He covered the inside into the final corner, forcing Quiles onto the longer route around the outside and making sure there was no gap for the championship leader to throw himself into.
Perfectly sensible. Probably exactly what you'd tell him to do.
Quiles had apparently considered that possibility as well.
Rather than forcing the issue, the 18-year-old let Almansa have the defensive line, carried the extra speed around the outside and concentrated on the exit. Almansa had protected the corner. Quiles had protected the bit that came afterwards.
They fired towards the line almost together.
Quiles got there 0.021 seconds earlier.
It was exquisite.
Not because it was spectacular in the usual Moto3 sense. Nobody bounced off anybody. There wasn't a ridiculous dive from four bike lengths back followed by several teenagers discovering new parts of the circuit.
It was better than that. It was calculated.
You could almost see the workings.
Almansa will defend. Let him. Take the wider line. Square the bike up. Get the drive. Beat him to the flag.
Done.
It was absolutely devastating for Almansa, who had led every corner of a race only to discover that unfortunately the championship awards the victory to whoever is leading at the little black and white bit at the end.
He'd ridden beautifully and deserved far more than the expression he was wearing afterwards.
But it was another glimpse of why Quiles looks increasingly like something beyond merely a very quick Moto3 rider.
The speed is obvious. He set a new race lap record while hunting Almansa down. The championship position is fairly persuasive too. But it's the racecraft that makes you take notice.
At 18, he already seems capable of watching a race unfold while he's actually participating in it, storing away little pieces of information for when he needs them later.
That's difficult to teach.
Brian Uriarte completed the podium after spending much of the race operating in the same postcode as the leading pair, but by the finish Quiles and Almansa had separated themselves from everybody else.
Eleven Moto3 victories now for Quiles. Only Romano Fenati and David Alonso have won more in the class.
He's 18.
There is quite clearly something going on here.
Moto2: Turn One Hands González the Keys
If Moto3 took 20 laps to reveal its winner, Moto2 took approximately 4 seconds to completely rearrange itself.
Senna Agius was on pole. Daniel Holgado was second. Angel Piqueras was third.
By Turn Two, none of them were involved anymore.
Piqueras arrived at Turn One on the inside, made contact with Holgado and the resulting accident swept the unfortunate Agius away on the outside. Three bikes, the entire front row and a fairly substantial portion of the expected race narrative disappeared into the gravel before everybody had properly sat down.
For Agius in particular, it was horrible luck. He'd been the fastest man on Saturday and had absolutely nowhere to go.
Piqueras knew it too.
He later went to the Intact GP garage to apologise and was met by an understandably unimpressed Agius, who essentially wanted to know why somebody starting third felt it necessary to try to win a 22-lap motorcycle race within the first 150 metres.
A reasonable question.
Somewhere just behind all this, Manuel González emerged to discover that three potentially serious obstacles had removed themselves simultaneously and his principal championship rival, Izan Guevara, had started 14th following a six-place grid penalty.
Sometimes the universe is trying to tell you something.
González listened.
Collin Veijer initially inherited the lead and rode superbly, but González didn't panic. He sat behind the Dutchman for the opening laps, worked him out and then used the drive out of Turn Six to line up a beautifully straightforward pass under braking for Turn Eight.
From there, the championship leader did what championship leaders are supposed to do.
He controlled it.
There was no desperate attempt to disappear at two seconds a lap. No unnecessary heroics. Just a sequence of relentlessly tidy laps while Veijer remained close enough to make sure González couldn't start thinking about what he was having for dinner.
There was one complication.
Track limits.
Misano spent much of the afternoon handing out warnings and long-lap penalties with the enthusiasm of a traffic warden who's just discovered an entire street of expired permits. Barry Baltus got one. Daniel Muñoz got one. José Antonio Rueda got one. Sergio García got one. Mario Aji got one.
González collected a warning of his own and suddenly had to spend the closing stages simultaneously trying to win a Grand Prix and avoiding several strips of green paint.
Veijer was still there, but after two successive DNFs his team had given him one particularly sophisticated piece of tactical advice before the race:
Finish the bloody thing.
Not literally, presumably, but that was the gist.
With González still around a second ahead and the riders behind several seconds away, Veijer eventually decided second place was rather preferable to explaining another motorcycle lying on its side.
It was the right decision.
He came home 2.451 seconds behind González for his first podium since Jerez and a badly needed result after those consecutive non-finishes. Barry Baltus was another couple of seconds back in third, despite the Belgian having taken the scenic route through Misano's enormous, long-lap loop.
Baltus deserves plenty of credit for that.
He'd built enough of an advantage beforehand that the penalty, which cost him roughly three and a half seconds, didn't even cost him the podium position. After an injury-disrupted season, his first podium of 2026 clearly meant rather a lot.
Ivan Ortola finished fourth, with Tony Arbolino producing his best result of the season in fifth after starting 16th.
Guevara did about as much as could reasonably be asked from 14th. He stayed out of trouble, picked his way forward and finished sixth. On most Sundays that would qualify as an excellent piece of damage limitation.
Unfortunately, the bloke he's trying to beat won.
González therefore leaves Misano with 232.5 points to Guevara's 185, stretching the championship advantage from 32.5 points to 47.5. Agius, whose race lasted all the way to Turn One, remains third on 149.
González was refreshingly honest afterwards. He knew he'd been fortunate. Had he qualified on pole himself, he pointed out, he might have been lying in the gravel with the others. Instead he was fifth, missed the carnage, had the speed when he needed it and took the opportunity when it arrived.
That's racing.
You don't get to choose when the door opens.
You just have to notice it before somebody closes it again.
So Misano gave us two very different winners.
González was presented with an opportunity and executed the rest of the afternoon almost perfectly.
Quiles had to create his own.
And somehow, at 18 years old, he waited until the final few metres of a 20-lap Grand Prix to do it.
One was championship management.
The other was racecraft bordering on surgery.
Both were a bit spesh.
