Salac keeps his head to win a Silverstone Moto2 thriller
Filip Salac took the first Grand Prix victory of his career at Silverstone after 17 laps of almost continuous disorder, beating Ivan Ortola by just three tenths of a second with Alex Escrig taking a maiden podium in third.
That, however, is the tidied-up version.
The actual British Grand Prix featured six riders with a serious sniff of victory, Tony Arbolino briefly remembering how to be terrifyingly fast, Danny Holgado attacking anything that moved and championship leader Manu Gonzalez celebrating victory with a lap still to run.
It was that sort of race.
Pole-sitter Izan Guevara and Alonso Lopez spent the opening exchanges swapping the lead before Holgado came barging into the conversation from seventh.
Gonzalez initially went backwards, dropping as low as eighth, but there was no obvious panic. There rarely has been this season. He simply started picking them off.
Meanwhile, Arbolino was having easily his most convincing afternoon of the year. The Italian came from ninth, worked his way into the lead and suddenly looked entirely capable of winning the thing.
Given how his season has gone, this was less a return to form than somebody unexpectedly switching the lights back on.
Unfortunately, they went off again at Vale.
Arbolino lost the front and slid out, leaving Holgado and Gonzalez at the sharp end with Ortola and Salac waiting behind.
Gonzalez finally forced his way into the lead at Vale at the end of lap 16.
He crossed the line in front.
And celebrated.
Unfortunately, this was a 17-lap race.
Gonzalez sat up and looked towards his team while Holgado, still very much engaged in a motorcycle race, arrived behind and clipped the slowing Kalex.
It was only a glancing blow, but enough to mangle Gonzalez's exhaust. By the time everyone had established that the chequered flag remained conspicuously absent, Salac was leading and Gonzalez was heading off for another lap with his exhaust dragging along the floor and throwing sparks behind him.
You couldn't have made it up.
The championship leader eventually limped home 14th.
An extraordinary mistake from a rider who has made precious few of them this season. He won't make that one again.
Holgado then had an enormous moment of his own, the rear snapping sideways through Luffield and very nearly launching him to the moon. Somehow he stayed aboard, but the save opened the door for Escrig to complete a brilliant late charge and snatch the first Grand Prix podium of his career.
Up front, Salac still had Ortola to deal with.
The Spaniard attacked, but Salac didn't put a wheel wrong. He crossed the line 0.303 seconds ahead to become the 64th different Moto2 winner and take his first victory after 139 Grand Prix starts.
This wasn't simply a case of being in the right place when Gonzalez got his sums wrong. Salac had started eighth, ridden intelligently through all the silliness and put himself exactly where he needed to be when the opportunity arrived.
Afterwards, it all rather caught up with him.
"I've been waiting for this 24 years. I'm a Grand Prix winner. It's the best day of my life."
Gonzalez's mistake cost him nine points to Guevara in the championship, reducing his lead to 42.5.
Not ideal.
Hardly a disaster.
And after 17 laps in which almost everything else happened, perhaps the strangest thing about Silverstone was that Filip Salac managed to keep his head while everyone around him seemed to be losing theirs.
