Khairul Idham Pawi, the Malaysian Moto3 rider, had a very lowly qualifying after he ended up on the 7th row of the grid by qualifying 20th. After crashing out of the last three races, he needed to put up a good performance for Honda Team Asia but his Saturday showing wasn’t very promising.

Having already won a race in his rookie year at Argentina this year in damp conditions, the 17-year-old would have been hoping for similar weather at the Sachsenring and that’s exactly what he got. In fact, the conditions were much worse with continuous rain. Pawi topped the timing charts in the warm up practice on Sunday morning and all the bookies then predicted him to win the race, and that’s exactly what happened.

Starting from the middle of the 7th row, Pawi got a great start off the line and then went on to overtake 7 riders on the outside of the dipping turn 1 and went on to pick out riders further through the first lap. By the time he came across the start finish straight after the race start, he found himself in 5th position. The following lap he overtook the race leaders to reach the front and never looked back.

Though he had a few moments when his rear stepped out and once when he missed his braking point, Pawi still managed not only to keep his position but also to maintain his gap to the 2nd place rider. Even when he went off on turn 1 and lost a lot of time, he managed to pull 3 seconds off the rest on the following lap.

Never did he try to settle down or to maintain his gap to the rest, he was always pushing and always increasing the gap. He finished the race12 seconds ahead of Leopard Racing’s Andrea Locatelli. With two race wins in the wet already in his rookie year, he will be one of the star riders to watch out for in the future.