Enea Bastianini claimed his third pole position of the season at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli, and will be joined on the front row of the 2015 San Marino Grand Prix by Brad Binder and Danny Kent.
With a time of 1:42.486, the Gresini rider comfortably beat Jonas Folger‘s 2013 pole record by almost 0.3 seconds. Meanwhile, Binder seems to have greatly benefited from the new swingarm that KTM have brought to this round for all of its teams. For the first time in his career, he will start from the front row, with a time just 0.037 seconds off the session best.
Behind the Red Bull KTM Ajo rider is championship leader Danny Kent, and the Leopard Racing man was 0.296 seconds off the pace. With only six minutes of the session remaining, he was down in fourteenth, but he recovered strongly to vastly improve on his final lap. However, this was still half a second slower than his FP3 times, suggesting there’s more to come from the young Briton.
The second row will be populated by Niccolo Antonelli, Romano Fenati and Miguel Oliveira. Efren Vazquez set a time good enough to start seventh, despite crashing out of the session with 15 minutes remaining.
Also of note are Lorenzo Dalla Porta who will begin the race from eighth, his strongest ever qualifying position, and John McPhee who had his worst grid position of the season: the Saxoprint RTG rider starts 26th. Both Estrella Galicia 0,0 entries, Jorge Navarro and Fabio Quartararo, were declared unfit and have withdrawn from the weekend.