Dominique Aegerter claimed his maiden Grand Prix pole position at the 129th attempt after a late burst saw him edge out Mika Kallio. The session had been dominated, almost in its entirety, by Kallio and it wasn’t until the 45th and final minute that the Finn’s supremacy came to an end, Aegerter snatching pole from under his nose.
Pole position had looked to be a formality for Kallio who moved to the top of the leaderboard immediately with a 1:25.271. The Marc VDS rider proceeded to gradually lower the benchmark time, breaking into the 1:24s at the half hour mark, with teammate Esteve Rabat seemingly the only rider able to challenge him.
But with two minutes remaining, Aegerter came alive with a 1:24.971 to split the Marc VDS teammates, just 0.008s off the pace, and on his next timed lap the Swiss went one better to overhaul Kallio for the first time all afternoon, setting a 1:24.761. Mika did improve himself on the final lap of the session but it was all to no avail as Aegerter took the first Moto2 pole of his career.
Kallio and Rabat will join him on the front row with 2013 Sachsenring winner Jordi Torres heading row two. Franco Morbidelli continued his excellent campaign with fifth on the grid ahead of Simone Corsi with Johann Zarco leading the third row from Thomas Luthi and Alex de Angelis.
British duo Sam Lowes and Gino Rea will start side-by-side but unfortunately for both, they will line up on the ninth row of the grid. Despite being 1.2s off pole position, the pair could only qualify 26th and 27th respectively.
