Tenth victory of the year for the recently proclaimed champion of the small category, in a race conditioned by the wind and where his main rival was the local driver Joe Kelso
Sunday, October 19, 2025, 07:25
The weather forecasts were fulfilled and the strong gusts of sustained wind of more than 50 km/h on the Phillip Island circuit greatly complicated the race with the light Moto3 machines. Although the wind, the cold or any condition did not matter, the king of the category once again demonstrated that he is one step above his rivals. And the Sevillian driver found a very tough nut to crack in the figure of local driver Joel Kelso.
The Australian was facing the opportunity of a lifetime, after having taken pole on Saturday, he went out for a note on Sunday. Kelso set a very strong pace for the difficult track conditions and immediately opened a gap with his rivals. The bad thing for him is that only one driver was able to follow him, but it was the fastest in the category, Rueda, who stuck to the tail of the ‘Aussie’ idol and together they escaped, lapping a second faster than the chasing group, where there was a lot of battle for the last position on the podium. And especially active was another Australian, Roulstone, who paid for his impulsiveness with an untimely crash in those first laps, curiously the only one in the entire race.
Kelso did the job in that initial part of the race and when Rueda took action, taking the lead of the race on lap seven, they already had more than four seconds on their pursuers. And when the Andalusian took the lead, he did not slow down and did not allow a single overtake by his rival. Keslso was close to the champion the entire race, but it was impossible to pass, and Rueda ended up signing his tenth victory of a season of ten. In the process, he kept the streak of Spanish motorcycling intact, which in 2025 has won the nineteen races that have been held in Moto3.
The fight for the last step of the podium was more entertaining, with a lot of battle between the other strong men in the category. The debutant Álvaro Carpe took advantage of the mess in the last laps to gain a few meters to return to a podium that he had not stepped on since May in Italy. Joel Esteban finished fourth, replacing the injured Foggia in Australia, ahead of Máximo Quiles and Adrián Fernández. The one who could not stay in the battle for the podium was the second place in the championship, Ángel Piqueras, who made a mistake in the curve entering the finish line and went long, staying at the back of the group. The Valencian driver’s zero made the fight for runners-up very tight, with Quiles only three points away with three races left until the end of the season.
