Supersport Balaton: Arenas handed a heavy penalty in Race 2; triumph and breakaway in the World Championship

Albert Arenas dominates the Supersport rematch in Hungary and is now pulling away in the World Championship. The Spaniard from Yamaha AS made the most of Valentin Debise’s ZXMoto retirement (technical problem) and Jaume Masia’s fifth place, who limited the damage with a fantastic comeback—but fifth place isn’t enough.

From this fourth round, Yamaha received a boost of 250 extra rpm, and it showed. ZXMoto’s crafty, talent-driven win in Saturday’s opener came like a bolt from the blue, with a very shrewd Debise taking advantage of the same-make squabble between Arenas and Can Oncu. This time there was no third wheel: in the closing laps Albert firmly took the reins of the large leading group and never left a gap.

The head-to-head between the two former Moto3 world champions clearly went in Arenas’s favor. His rival Jaume Masia made life difficult for himself by slipping in qualifying and again at the dawn of race 1 while trying to climb back. Forced once more to start from way back (25th on the grid), Masia produced a formidable comeback: by the second lap he was already eighth, recovering fifteen positions in a flash. Ten laps from the end, after passing Booth-Amos and the gritty Alcoba, he latched onto the tail of the lead quintet, but without enough tire left to try and shake up the order.

Can Oncu couldn’t contain Arenas, but he kept his nose clean and managed to hold off the charging Roberto Garcia. The day before, the 19-year-old had overcooked it, crashing out four laps from the end while leading. This time he stayed out of trouble, bagging his first World Championship podium in Supersport. The first Ducati at the finish was the excellent Matteo Ferrari, author of a superb performance. Unfortunately, in the final stages he lacked that extra bit of pace needed to attack the front three. But that’s fine too.