Mattia Pasini claimed his first pole position of the 2018 Moto2 season after narrowly edging out Marcel Schrotter at Mugello. The Italian completed a memorable day for the home supporters by taking his seventeenth career pole in a relatively quiet session which saw most headline lap times set early on.
This was certainly the case at the front of the field with eight of the top ten qualifiers setting their quickest time of the session in the first half of proceedings, five doing saw on their second flying lap of the entire afternoon. One of the key exceptions was title contender Lorenzo Baldassarri who suffered a crash before having registered a time, causing him to do most of his work later on.
Schrotter made a bright start as times immediately dropped into the 1:51s, substantially quicker than anything seen so far this weekend. The Dynavolt rider set a 1:51.605 but that wasn’t enough to earn him a first ever pole position, Pasini pipping him by three hundredths of a second with a lap only fractionally slower than the outright circuit record.
Alex Marquez rounds out the front row ahead of championship leader Francesco Bagnaia who bounced back after a difficult morning. Simone Corsi starts fifth ahead of leading rookie Romano Fenati and the second Sky VR46 of Luca Marini while Baldassarri salvaged eighth after his early crash, just ahead of Joan Mir and Jorge Navarro.
Moto2 Gran Premio d’Italia Oakley: (Qualifying)
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