Jack Miller took his fifth pole position of the 2014 Moto3 season at Indianapolis as many of his rivals failed to find time in the closing stages of an unusually quiet qualifying session. The championship leader hit the front fifteen minutes into the session and was never headed from there as his main competitors either struggled for pace or clear track towards the end.
Moto3 sessions usually provide non-stop drama from start to finish but the action was at its most frantic early on as a group of Honda-powered riders disputed pole position. Alex Marquez was central to it, going quickest on numerous occasions despite the best efforts of teammate Alex Rins and the Saxoprint-RTG riders, Efren Vazquez and John McPhee, but the KTM contingent was planning its response.
The Ajo Motorsport squad was taking a slightly different approach to the session and held its riders back for the opening ten minutes, instead opting to send Jack Miller, Karel Hanika, Niklas Ajo and Danny Kent out line astern to tow each other around to a fast time. The strategy paid instant dividends with Miller going straight to the top of the leaderboard on a 1:41.286 and by the time his run was over, the Australian had clocked a 1:40.727 which would ultimately prove good enough for pole.
Efren Vazquez navigated his way through some serious traffic to snatch second by one thousandth of a second from Alex Marquez while Romano Fenati put his recent qualifying troubles behind him to secure fourth on the grid. Juanfran Guevara was the sole rider to make a significant impact on the top ten during the final burst of laps, snatching fifth from the impressive Jorge Navarro with John McPhee also slipping a spot to seventh after unwittingly providing the slipstream which dragged Guevara up the order.
Francesco Bagnaia will start eighth on his return from injury ahead of Alessandro Tonucci and Karel Hanika while Alex Rins tumbled to a disappointing twelfth, leaving him with the most work to do among the championship frontrunners.
