Emilia Romagna MotoGP: Bagnaia beats Martin for pole, Marquez seventh after crash
Reigning world champion makes it back-to-back poles at Misano
Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia set a second successive Misano MotoGP pole at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix after beating Jorge Martin with a new lap record, while Marc Marquez crashed.
Bagnaia and Martin traded lap records in the Q2 session at Misano on Saturday morning, but it was the world champion who prevailed with a 1m30.031s.
That lap put the factory Ducati rider 0.214s clear of Martin, with the pair split by just seven points ahead of this afternoon’s sprint race.
Enea Bastianini leaped up to third at the end of Q2, but was 0.533s adrift of the pole time, while a crash for Marc Marquez left him in seventh.
After Friday practice, the rest of the Emilia Romagna GP has looked like it was heading towards a head-to-head battle between Bagnaia and Martin.
Bagnaia set the initial pace in Q2 with a 1m30.879s, putting him 0.025s clear of Martin after their first flying laps.
But on his second tour, Martin set a provisional new lap record with a 1m30.245s to blast the field open and take a lead of 0.344s on his Pramac Ducati.
Bagnaia closed that deficit down to 0.097s on the first lap of his second run, before improving to a 1m30.031s to take over top spot and qualify on pole ahead of his 100th grand prix start.
Martin’s final flying lap appeared to be compromised by getting stuck behind Pramac team-mate Franco Morbidelli, with the Spaniard unable to improve on his 1m30.245s.
A late 1m30.564s from Bastianini put him onto the front row ahead of KTM’s Brad Binder, who came through Q1.
Pedro Acosta - who topped FP2 - completed the top five for Tech3, while Marco Bezzecchi was sixth on his VR46 Ducati.
Marc Marquez crashed at the end of FP2 and started Q2 on his #2 Gresini Ducati, before falling once again at Turn 3 with just under 10 minutes to go in the session.
The Spaniard was able to head out on his #1 bike following its repair job from his FP2 crash, but he couldn’t do anything to advance on his 1m30.880s set early in Q2.
With improvements for Binder and Bastianini late on, it pushed Marquez onto the third row in seventh ahead of Aprilia’s Maverick Vinales and Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo.
The top 12 was completed by Morbidelli, Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaro and the Trackhouse rider Miguel Oliveira, who also came through Q1.
VR46’s Fabio Di Giannantonio just missed out on a Q2 place and will start 13th, while Luca Marini and Joan Mir enjoyed their best qualifying of the season in 15th and 16th on the factory Honda.
Jack Miller will start a lowly 19th for KTM, while Yamaha’s Alex Rins took no part in qualifying due to illness.
A crash for Alex Marquez on the sister Gresini Ducati left him 21st.
