2009 Brno 125cc Race Result - Last Lap Challenge Held Off Comfortably

Result and summary of the 125cc race at Brno:

Nicolas Terol won the first race of the day at Brno, after leading almost from start to finish. Terol got away from the line well, though polesitter Andrea Iannone got into turn 1 ahead of him, but Terol was quickly back past and into the lead. Bradley Smith quickly closed up the gap to the leading pair, but pushing just a little too hard on the first lap saw the British rider nearly highsided off on the last corner, dropping him 4 places and out of touch with the leaders. With Smith gone, his team mate and championship leader Julian Simon took advantage to close the gap and run down the leading duo.

With Terol, Iannone and Simon starting to escape, Smith tried to organize the pursuit behind them, but the following group was too large to impose any discipline on, and by the time Smith had dealt with the squabbling of Sergio Gadea, Efren Vazquez, Pol Espargaro and Sandro Cortese, the trio of leaders were too far gone and too fast for Smith to catch them.

Terol, Iannone and Simon were clear to fight over victory. Terol led commandingly for most of the race, Iannone only briefly passing the Spaniard. But Julian Simon and Andrea Iannone were spending too much time scrapping over 2nd to trouble Terol's lead. With 6 laps to go, the battle with Simon had taken too much out of Iannone's tires, and the Italian quickly dropped away. Victory would go to either Terol or Simon.

As leader in the championship and more experienced of the two, Simon had to be the favorite, but a brilliant piece of passing through some backmarkers on lap 15 saw Terol put two riders between himself and Simon as the pair entered the final esses of turns 13 and 14 and get a gap as Simon had to wait until turn 1 to get clear again. Simon quickly caught up, but the added complications of passing backmarkers were starting to take their toll. On the last lap, Simon mounted a final push, but Terol held him off easily, going on to take his second ever victory, and his first win in the dry.

Simon came home in 2nd, but was happy enough to have extended his championship lead, while Iannone finished a lonely 3rd, ahead of Bradley Smith an equally lonely 4th. The battle for 5th had been the most intense of the race, a big group squabbling over it. Pol Espargaro eventually came out on top of that fight, ahead of Sandro Cortese, Stefan Bradl, Marc Marquez, Sergo Gadea, Joan Olive and Johann Zarco. Gadea, with a 9th place finish, gave up a lot of points in the title chase to the top 4.