Senna Agius turned left out of Phillip Island’s fearsomely-fast final corner, clicked through the gears to around 295km/h, and did something he’d never done in his entire Moto2 world championship career.
Lead a lap of a Grand Prix.
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The problem for Agius was that there were still 22 laps to go of the Australian Grand Prix last Sunday; the problem for his opposition was that, earlier in the Phillip Island weekend, he’d shown what he could do on a clear track and being left to his own devices to conquer it.
Fast-forward a tick over 35 minutes later, and Agius was a home race Grand Prix winner, Australia’s first at Phillip Island since Jack Miller won the Moto3 race 11 years previously.
Miller’s victory that day – as was Agius’ breakthrough first win in Moto2 at Silverstone in May this year – was a last-gasp thriller, victories taken with no time to think.
On Sunday at Phillip Island, time was all that Agius had.
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Lap after lap after lap, the 20-year-old never saw another rider in front of him. Under darkening skies and with a tailwind down the start-finish straight that was so strong that every race at Phillip Island had to be delayed an hour for the worst of the conditions to dissipate, Agius and his Kalex bike were at one, yet with no-one else.
His lead – which peaked at 5.8 seconds as a mass pack brawl for the final two podium places erupted behind him – dwindled to 3.6secs at the chequered flag. For a rider who had never led a world championship lap before Sunday, leading 23 of them in his own backyard was simultaneously stressful, and not.
“It’s a huge moment to win at home, I could see the crowd and hear them on the last lap,” Agius reflected later.
“I just was thinking ‘one corner at a time’. My first victory in Silverstone was just a fight to the end, but this one was quite lonely and, mentally, completely different.
“I didn’t want it to end … but also, I wanted it to end.”
It was the sort of victory that only the best Moto2 riders can muster before they inevitably graduate to MotoGP; for Australian fans sitting trackside wondering who our successor to Miller in the premier-class might be in the future, it was another sign that the Sydney kid with a name that screams motorsport royalty has what it takes.
It was also a win that seemed inevitable – if anything at Phillip Island can ever be considered inevitable – from 48 hours earlier.
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Agius celebrated in style after he crushed the field in his home Grand Prix on Sunday. (Photo by Paul Crock / AFP) / –IMAGE RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE – STRICTLY NO COMMERCIAL USE–Source: AFP
ADVICE FROM LEGEND PUTS AGIUS ON RIGHT PATH
The seeds of Agius’ annihilation of the field were sown in Friday’s second practice session.
The 40-minute session isn’t really about how rapidly you can ride once, it’s more about building your race rhythm as a dress rehearsal for Sunday, assessing how hard and for how long you can go on a set of tyres, finding a sweet spot and staying in it.
For Agius, that sweet spot dwarfed whatever his rivals could find. Brazilian rival – and 2026 MotoGP graduate – Diogo Moreira ended with the session’s fastest time, 0.008secs ahead of the Australian, but the Sydneysider found a zone and never left it.
Moreira’s session-topping time (1min 30.315secs) was one of three laps the Brazilian managed in the 1:30s bracket across the session. A quartet of other rivals also managed three laps inside 91 seconds. Some other riders dipped into the 1:30s once.
In 21 total laps, Agius did it 12 times.
His precision through the third sector of Phillip Island’s 4.445km layout was sublime; from the exit of the chilly and appropriately-named Siberia corner, through the Hayshed at Turn 8 and up and over the top of the signature Lukey Heights section of the track, Agius was routinely two-tenths of a second faster through a sector that lasts a tick over 17 seconds. It was as eye-catching as it was metronomic, and the basis from which to build for race day.
Come Saturday qualifying, Agius finished a career-best second, just 11-thousandths of a second behind pole-sitter Moreira, and a step up on his previous best of third at this year’s Spanish Grand Prix at Jerez, where he went on to finish in the same position in the race.
It left him in a confident mood that more could be possible.
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“This track is not so easy to be really strong over the [23-lap] distance, but we did our homework really well on Friday,” he said on Sunday.
“I did a lot of laps in the 1min 30secs [bracket] on Friday, 10 or 13 laps in the 1:30s. In qualifying I struggled to get the last tenths [of a second], a 1:29.8 was all that I had, but for the front row that was good enough. I wanted to go to the grid knowing that I had the pace, and I sat on the grid really confident.”
Part of that confidence had come from a meeting earlier in the week with an Australian motorsport legend, one that put the pressures of a home race into perspective.
Casey Stoner turned 40 ahead of the Phillip Island weekend and has been retired for 13 years, but the two-time premier-class world champion has been much more present this season, reconnecting with old friends and rivals after only intermittently being around the paddock in the years since he hung up his helmet.
Agius struck up a relationship with Stoner as his own career began to get out of the starting blocks, and had the words of the six-time Australian Grand Prix winner in his ears as he tackled a weekend where the off-track commitments and demands on his time might be more than the rest of the season combined.
“I saw Casey on Wednesday and I said ‘it’s not a normal weekend’, and he told me just to treat it like a normal weekend,” Agius said.
“I kept saying ‘I need to achieve this, this and this on Friday’, and he said even if you don’t, just keep calm and do the work. He kept telling me to keep present and keep calm, especially when things are not happening like you want in this weekend. I took it all in as a positive.
“Casey’s such a role model for us. He’s such an idol of mine, and to speak with him on Wednesday with a really nice thing to do from him. We’re all trying to be like him, and especially do what he did.”
Personality-wise, Agius is more Stoner than compatriots like Miller or Moto3 rider Joel Kelso, who bring a distinctly Australian larrikin spirit to the workplace, with no sign of a filter. Like Stoner, Agius is more prone to introspection, intensity, a propensity to perhaps overthink things. Listening to him speak, and he can sound either 20 or 30 years old in the same sentence. There’s a matter-of-fact but eloquently-delivered belief in what Agius says, and he has that detached stand-offishness that confidence brings, and which will flow more freely once he gets more experience and results under his belt.
He’s also not going to tell you how good he is.
But he will show you.
Having never led a Moto2 lap before Sunday, Agius rattled off 23 of them in first place. (Photo by Paul Crock / AFP)Source: AFP
DOMINANT WIN HINTS AT BIGGER FUTURE
The wind howled and the skies darkened at Phillip Island on Sunday, but Agius was too busy trying to recreate that zone he’d found himself in on Friday to really take it in. The pre-race back-slapping and attention came and went, and he immediately bolted to the lead once the lights went out. It was time to put Friday’s preparation into practice.
The tailwind caught Agius out multiple times in the opening laps as he tried to gauge its impact – he ran wide at the first corner, lost part of his advantage, built it back up again and then lost it again – but once he found a rhythm, it was curtains for the rest in a category where pack racing is common, and breakaway wins are few and far between.
Seven laps in, Agius led by seven-tenths of a second. With a four-rider pack swapping paint and banging elbows as they fought for second place behind him, that lead became 1.2 seconds by lap eight. Nine consecutive laps in that 1min 30secs bracket busted the race open, and he had a lead of nearly six seconds with three laps to go.
Time, then, to take it all in.
“First [priority] was to get a good start,” he reflected afterwards.
“I got a good start, but it wasn’t easy to understand the limit with the wind. All the references through sector one – especially with the full [fuel] tank, I couldn’t stop in Turn 1 enough, and when I opened the gas I was struggling for rear grip. I was a bit concerned with the conditions but I stayed calm and tried to adapt as best I can, and once I found my rhythm I put together quite a few fast laps and could see that I started to have an advantage.
“The wind, when it comes from behind, it caught me out … the gusts in Turn 1 were incredible. I’m not a super-light rider and the bike’s not super light either, and the wind pushed me all the way onto the kerb so I was a bit stressed in the first laps.
“This track, for the rear tyre, is so critical. It’s 23 laps here … it’s a short lap time, but the lap itself feels like forever because you spend so much time at lean angle. I kept on trying to be the hammer, trying to be a well-oiled machine.”
A handful of laps into Sunday’s race, Agius was in a class of one. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images
A year after he’d finished third in Australia – his first world championship podium – Sunday’s dominance showed how far Agius has come, and why Australian motorcycle racing fans have more hope for his future than any rider since Miller’s move from Moto3 race-winner to MotoGP rookie – bypassing Moto2 altogether – in 2015.
After a joyous in-lap back to the pits, the podium ceremony and a host of TV interviews, Agius plonked himself into a chair in the Phillip Island media centre, relishing being the centre of attention, his calm voice in contrast with his hands still shaking from the adrenaline dump of the previous hour’s work.
“I can’t believe I’ve won at home,” he said, shaking his head.
“Last year was a highlight but this year is a new level… it’s quite emotional. It’s been a long road. We’ve showed today that if we work well and keep on this path, then the results will come.”
They’re results that, as one paddock insider sees it, could lead to a top-flight future sooner rather than later.
Speaking on the ‘Paddock Pass’ podcast, MotoGP writer and Moto2 world TV feed commentator Neil Morrison pointed to Agius’ talent, age and relative lack of experience as reasons why Australia might not be waiting long for Miller’s successor.
“We’ve seen such a marked step up from him in 2025 … he’s just 20 years old still, and this is just his second year racing in the world championship – he didn’t come through Moto3,” Morrison said.
“I still think there’s aspects of his approach which he’s learning, as you are at that age. There’s GPs where things seem to go slightly awry on Sunday, and he’s at a bit of a loss to explain what exactly has happened. There’s maybe one or two aspects of how he communicates with his team that I’ve heard could maybe be improved and that he’s trying to work on at the moment. But on the basis of his performances, his good performances this year, you have to say this guy is the real deal.
“He’s going to be a MotoGP rider in 2027, I’m pretty convinced of that.”