Maverick Vinales - Photo Credit: MotoGP.com
In a qualifying session marred by horrendous problems with traffic, Maverick Vinales was the man who used it to his advantage to claim pole position for the British Grand Prix. The Spaniard tucked in behind Luis Salom as he came over the line with a 2:16.187 enough to edge out Efren Vazquez by two tenths of a second.
With the sky looking ominous, the riders flooded out onto the track at the start of the session to avoid any oncoming rain. Alexis Masbou was the early polesitter but Vinales and Vazquez toppled him in quick succession, with the JHK Laglisse rider four tenths quicker than Vinales.
The threat of rain diminished and the riders returned to the pits but the upshot of that was a mad scramble in the closing minutes to try and secure a grid position. With nine minutes to go, Vinales used Salom's slipstream to snatch provisional pole while Sandro Cortese found a clear space of track to take fourth from his teammate Danny Kent.
Everybody seemed to be looking for a slipstream which led to a farcical finish to the session as several riders ended up bunched together, none of whom wanted to lead the pack. Cortese was one rider particularly disadvantaged as he came across three riders wandering across the road at Brooklands on a flying lap.
Vazquez and Masbou failed to improve but held onto their places on the front row but Vinales looked on course to improve on his last lap, only to be sat up Salom at Vale as the RW Racing rider dived up the inside of him. It seemed to have paid off for Salom as he moved up to fourth but the stewards deleted his time after he exceeded the track limits at Club. As a result, he fell back to sixth behind the factory KTMs of Cortese and Kent.
Louis Rossi will start seventh for Racing Team Germany with Zulfahmi Khairuddin and Romano Fenati completing the third row. Estrella Galicia 0,0 had a tough session with traffic causing them problems too. Alex Rins and Miguel Oliveira will start next to each other on the fourth row in tenth and eleventh.
After an encouraging time in practice, Danny Webb could only qualify 21st for Mahindra while Racing Steps Foundation duo John McPhee and Fraser Rogers were 29th and 33rd respectively with the debutant crashing at Aintree, bringing his session to an early end.
