MotoGP COTA Qualifying: Francesco Bagnaia takes third consecutive pole position
He’s on a roll! Francesco Bagnaia is on pole position again!
Francesco Bagnaia just can’t stop impressing, he got his first win recently and since then has barrel-rolled into unbeatable form taking pole position in Aragon, Misano and now at COTA with wins at Aragon and Misano to back up the pole positions skimming points from Fabio Quartararo every race. The Ducati has never really consistently been impressive here in COTA with the track historically being known as a Honda track due to the records Marc Marquez held here, however as time has progressed and especially in 2021 it is more of a Ducati track with the Bologna bullets seriously impressing in every session now taking pole by a solid margin of 0.348 seconds.
In second place was a strong Fabio Quartararo who put in a championship-winning performance today to take second place in qualifying seemingly from nowhere after struggling all weekend long, the Yamaha has been lost throughout this weekend in most sessions but Quartararo has once again been able to get the job done when it was required of him to start from the front row and give himself the best start possible to try and score enough points to be able to win the title next time out in Misano.
Rounding out the third row was Marc Marquez who takes his first front-row start of the season, the pole position record is gone but I don’t think Marquez will be too phased by it given his physical state at the moment, the fact he’s been so strong here all weekend is a miracle in itself and is a weekend to be proud of, all three riders on the front row dug deep and impressed given that it was not the guys we expected to be in the top positions with Jack Miller looking so strong.
The 200bpm heart rate man Jorge Martin starts tomorrows race at the front of row two with some obscene pace throughout the qualifying pace learning lots behind Marc Marquez, he has been really impressive all season long and a podium is within reach tomorrow for him, he led Takaaki Nakagami and his teammate Johann Zarco in sixth place, three Ducati’s in the top 6 is a really strong result and there’s no doubt we will see at least one on the podium tomorrow.
Row three was headed by the Suzuki boys of Alex Rins then Joan Mir, both riders struggling a lot this weekend which is unexpected after a positive-sounding Misano test, both riders don’t seem to be jelling well with the circuit and with Mir losing out on the new chassis’ on bike #1 due to an expired motor in FP4 which instantly put him at an disadvantage as he was forced to use bike #2, joining the pair on row three was a superly impressive Luca Marini who is seemingly motivated by teammate Enea Bastianini’s podium last time out, he topped Q1 with 6 seconds to go and took a strong top 10 qualifying with Jack Miller rounding out the top 10 to put five Ducati’s in the top 10.
Q2 Results –
Q1 Results –
Featured image – Ducati
