Pol Espargaro will start his final race in the Moto2 class from pole position after dominating qualifying at Valencia. The newly crowned champion took provisional pole with half an hour of the session remaining and was never headed as the other riders squabbled over the other two spots on the front row.
Takaaki Nakagami, one of Moto2’s better qualifiers in 2013, set the early pace with a 1:35.608 on his second timed lap but the Japanese rider wouldn’t go any quicker for the rest of the session, causing him to slide down the order. His time at the top was ended by Jordi Torres but Espargaro soon overtook the pair of them with a 1:35.212 and the Pons rider would break into the 1:34s later on, becoming the only rider to do so.
Shortly after his teammate took pole, Esteve Rabat joined him on the front row with the second fastest time but with a quarter of an hour remaining, Torres struck back to regain second spot. Both regularly threatened improvements but with a minute to go, Simone Corsi upstaged both Spaniards with a 1:35.275 to secure his place on the middle of the front row.
Torres will start third after pipping Rabat by seven thousandths of a second while Thomas Luthi and Nicolas Terol set identical times to qualify fifth and sixth respectively. Alex De Angelis starts tomorrow’s race in seventh ahead of Johann Zarco and Xavier Simeon while Nakagami’s inability to better his early time saw him drop to tenth.
Gino Rea produced a tremendous late effort to qualify thirteenth but Scott Redding endured a torrid afternoon as the injuries sustained in Australia and Japan handicapped him, leaving the Marc VDS rider seventeenth overall.
