Johann Zarco is well placed to extend his Moto2 championship lead after claiming pole position for the Catalunya Grand Prix. The Frenchman set the fastest ever Moto2 lap of the Circuit de Catalunya to outpace Jonas Folger while defending champion Tito Rabat took the final place on the front row.
Sandro Cortese had set the pace in Friday practice and the German made a bright start to qualifying with a 1:46.537 on his first flying lap of the session. The Intact rider held onto provisional pole until the halfway mark when Rabat’s steady increase in pace took him to a 1:46.423 and Cortese was relegated a further place when Dominique Aegerter rose to second, using Rabat’s slipstream to great effect.
With a quarter of an hour remaining, less than half a second covered the top ten but Zarco suddenly made a mockery of the competition, putting four tenths into them with a 1:46.007. His blistering pace even had the likes of Aegerter shaking his head in the pits and when the Ajo rider improved to a 1:45.895, pole position was out of his rivals’ reach.
Rabat returned to the track in the closing stages and halved the gap to Zarco but he was usurped by Folger seven minutes from time, knocking him down to third. Aegerter’s clever tactics early in the session saw him hold onto fourth while Sam Lowes recovered from a near-crash in the first ten minutes to secure fifth spot on the grid.
The Paginas Amarillas teammates line up next with Luis Salom pipping Alex Rins to sixth while Simone Corsi clocked a 1:46.526 to take eighth, demoting Cortese who paid the price for failing to better his early benchmark time and fell back to ninth.
MOTO2 G.P. MONSTER ENERGY DE CATALUNYA – QUALIFYING RESULT
[table id=364 /]
