Thanks to a good fifth position, obtained in difficult conditions, Pol Espargaró managed to qualify his KTM in the middle of the second row, while his teammate Johann Zarco will start this Sunday from the first in the company of Marc Márquez and Jack Miller.
During the first qualifying session, Pol advanced to Q2 with the second time in 2'05.053, 0.020 behind his teammate Johann zarco. The second session took place in complicated conditions, with some parts of the circuit dry and others wet, and intermittent rain falling at times on certain parts of the track. Having participated in Q1 was an advantage for Johann and Pol, who knew roughly where the difficult parts were, unlike their direct opponents.
Both KTM riders were brilliant from the start of Q2, before Marc Marquez did an absolutely incredible 2'02.753 which earned him pole position. In certain curves, Marc put the motorcycle in a slide on a trajectory whose width did not exceed approximately 50 cm! It was great art, but it was not to be missed.
Marquez did not miss, and Jack Miller achieved a great feat with the second time, but still 2.524 behind the Spanish champion. Miller also ended his session with a fall (fortunately not serious), proof of his great attack.
Pol Espargaró thus equaled his best qualification of the season, having already been positioned in fifth place on the grid in Austin, Texas. During the last Grand Prix in Germany, he started from eighth position. In terms of results, Pol made a reasonably good start to the season, finishing the nine Grands Prix already contested, with five finishing places among the top 10, including sixth position in France, seventh in Catalonia and eighth in Texas. His absolute best performance of course remains his fantastic third place in Valencia last year, on the podium with Andrea Dovizioso and Alex Rins.
According to Pol Espargaró, “ A great day for everyone: the team, myself and Johann for the front row and we were all delighted with Q1 and to finish in complicated conditions.”
“After yesterday we knew it would involve some risk – especially with the track being so wet and then drying – to progress to Q2. Johann worked all year and I'm happy for him because he's a good guy.”
“It’s great that we both made Q2 and then these incredible results. Tomorrow will be interesting. It will be a fun race for us.”
“It’s been an up and down start to the weekend so far. Now I'm very happy with fifth place on the grid, for me, for the team and especially for Johann, because he really worked hard to move forward. Third position on the starting grid is the first small reward for him. It's super nice to see two KTMs in the first two rows tomorrow. The first few rounds will definitely be fun.”
“Since we knew the rain was coming soon, we tried all the tires on Friday. So we have a good idea of what we are going to use in the race. It looks good. My running pace is impressive.”
Also, for Pol Espargaró, it is not unusual that he gains 17 positions from Friday to Saturday. “Yeah, I can’t believe how much we’ve progressed. Today, very difficult conditions prevailed. The problem was that it was never really wet. We had a wet track at first, then half dry, completely dry then very wet again. It was sometimes very difficult.”
“We have to keep moving forward, because we have to evaluate our strength, because we only had two dry track testing sessions so far. Our main goal is to race on soft tires.”
Qualification results:
Reference times:
Test record: 1'54.596 by Marc Márquez (Honda) in 2016
Lap record: 1'56.027 by Dani Pedrosa (Honda) in 2014
Provisional ranking of the World Championship:
Photos © Sebas Romero for KTM
