Francesco Bagnaia enjoyed the better of an action-packed Moto2 qualifying session at Misano to take a crucial advantage over title rival Miguel Oliveira into Sunday’s race. The Italian took a comfortable pole position for Sky VR46, his third in a row, while Oliveira suffered a crash on his way to ninth on the grid, leaving him in the danger zone ahead of a congested open sequence of corners tomorrow.
As is so often the case in Moto2 qualifying, the key action took place in the early stages with riders going straight out on their remaining new soft tyres. Bagnaia played second fiddle to his compatriot Mattia Pasini for the first five minutes but soon rose to the top of the leaderboard, clocking a 1:37.271 before a further improvement three minutes later took pole out of his rivals’ reach.
Pasini was relegated to third by the in-form Marcel Schrotter, although the German came perilously close to losing his fastest lap due to track limits. The Dynavolt rider was adjudged to have kept one wheel on the circuit, allowing him to keep his second fastest time, with Pasini forced to settle for a place on the outside of the front row.
Fabio Quartararo heads the second row for Speed Up while Brad Binder bucked the trend of the session by improving in the latter stages, climbing to fifth ahead of Gresini’s Jorge Navarro. Luca Marini starts from the front of row three ahead of Alex Marquez while Oliveira blew any chance of improving on ninth with a tumble at the Rio hairpin.
