There was no joy for Team Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS rider Franco Morbidelli in today’s rain lashed Moto2 race at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli.

The Italian star made a dramatic early exit when he crashed out while leading on lap four of 26.

This was only the second time in 13 races this season that the Moto2 World Championship leader had failed to score points.

However on the back of his dominant seven race victories Morbidelli continues to lead the championship with a nine point advantage over Tom Lüthi.

Morbidelli has 223 points with Lüthi on 214 with five races remaining in a tight title contest.

The race started in low visibility and steady rain with standing water creating low grip conditions.

Morbidelli made a superb start from position two on the front row and quickly opened a comfortable lead of more than two seconds over eventual race winner Dominique Aegerter.

But it was all over at turn eight on lap four with Morbidelli losing the front and bouncing uninjured into the gravel trap.

Team Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS rider Alex Marquez did not contest the Misano race having suffered an injury to his left hip in a fall during FP1 on Friday.

The next race is the Aragon GP in Spain in two weeks.

Franco Morbidelli: DNF
“Unfortunately at this race I was fast all weekend in the dry but in the wet today I made a mistake. Now I have remain focussed and push for a good result at the next race in Aragon because I still lead the championship by nine points. We know we are a strong team so now we need to keep pushing, anything can happen as we saw today.”

Michael Bartholemy: Team Principal
“Overall not an enjoyable weekend with this outcome. Firstly with only Franco in the race with Alex out injured. And then we saw some nice opening laps by Franco to lead the race but perhaps he was pushing too much to make a gap and crashed in very complicated conditions. The main thing is that he still leads by nine points after Tom Lüthi's good result today so now the championship is at a very interesting stage.”