Spread evenly through the season, Enea Bastianini scored his third win of 2022 in Round 7 of the MotoGP series in LeMans, France. In Moto2, Americans Cameron Beaubier and Joe Roberts scored top-10 finishes.
Australia’s Jack Miller earned the hole shot with Bastianini in tow, but during the frenetic first lap, the eventual winner was pushed back to fourth as Francesco Bagnaia and Alex Rins scooted past. An off-track excursion for Rins on Lap 3, a mistake by Miller on Lap 12, and the pass for the lead over Bagnaia on Lap 21 allowed Bastianini to steadily move back up the grid.
Bastianini has now won Rounds 1, 3 and 7 with disappointing results of eighth or worse in the intervening rounds. As a result, he finds himself third in the championship standings behind the defending champ Fabio Quartararo and Aleix Espagaro. Both riders were able to earn respectable points with Espagaro standing on the bottom row of the podium and Quartararo just outside that mark in fifth.
Miller finished second.
Quartararo’s fourth-place finish was enough to allow him to keep the points’ lead by four over Espagaro.
He wanted more but it wasn't for a lack of trying! ⚔️@FabioQ20 takes fourth at home to retain his Championship lead! 💪#FrenchGP 🇫🇷 pic.twitter.com/DA4UWqyeia
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) May 15, 2022
In Moto2, Augusto Fernandez beat second-place Aron Canet and Somkiat Chantra to the checkers, but Beaubier pressed them for the elusive podium finish when he crossed under the checkers fourth. This was Beaubier’s second top-10 of the season and his first top-five after finishing ninth in the season-opener in Qatar. He was not classified in the latest three rounds, which has put him well down the championship ranking, 14th in points.
Adding to the disappointment, Beaubier rode in the third position from Lap 11 through 13, when he was passed by Chantra. Beaubier reclaimed third on Lap 15 only to lose it to Canet before clawing his way back up to third for another five laps, ultimately giving way for a final time with only two laps remaining.
It has been a different story in 2022 for Roberts, who won his first Moto2 race two rounds ago in Portugal. That propelled him to fourth in the standings, as several of his closest competitors were swept into an 11-bike melee nine laps into the race. Roberts has ridden well in the latest two rounds and swept the top 10, but with the points top-loaded for the podium finishers, he slipped from fourth following his win two weeks ago to fifth last week after the Grand Prix of Spain, and now sits sixth, three points behind the LeMans winner Fernandez.