The Tuenti Racing rider beat Nico Terol in a marvellous last-lap battle at the Gran Premio A-Style de Aragón, as the 125cc Championship was blown wide open after Marc Márquez crashed out on lap one.

Pol Espargaró took his third win of the season at Aragón on Sunday with a masterful ride that climaxed in a final-lap fight with Nico Terol, who finished the race second and moved to the top of the Championship after a highly dramatic 125cc contest.

There was a huge development not just in the race but also the Championship at the very start when Randy Krummenacher crashed at turn one on the opening lap and took Marc Márquez down with him. The Swiss rider was able to remount his bike but Championship leader going into the race Márquez was not and suffered his first DNF since the second round at Jerez. Krummenacher was later black flagged for the incident.

That left a trio of Espargaró, Terol and Bradley Smith to contend for the podium positions as the trio pulled away from the remainder of the field, and the two Spaniards slowly began to open up a gap on the Brit.

Espargaró and Terol engaged in an intriguing scrap which saw the pair swap the lead on a number of occasions throughout, as they attempted to outwit one another. At one stage Terol appeared to be pulling away but his rival responded and kept a close check on him going into the final lap.


It was then that Espargaró made a daring bid for victory, going round the outside of Terol and assuming the lead which he held to cross the finish line just 0.050s ahead of the Bancaja Aspar rider, whose team-mate Bradley Smith rode to a lonely third place at 9.410s further back for his third podium of the campaign – his first since Catalunya.

Efrén Vázquez (Tuenti Racing) came in fourth at just over 6.5s back, with Sandro Cortese (Avant Mitsubishi Ajo) and Tomoyoshi Koyama (Racing Team Germany) completing the top six. Esteve Rabat (Blusens-STX) edged Jonas Folger (Ongetta Team) for seventh place by just over a tenth of a second, with Danny Webb (Andalucia Cajasol) and Luis Salom (Stipa-Molenaar) scoring top-ten finishes.

The repercussions of the race result for the Championship were that Terol now leads on 208 points, with Espargaró moving into second on 202 whilst Márquez drops to third and remains on 197.