MotoGP Emilia Romagna Qualifying: Francesco Bagnaia takes pole in climactic qualifying

October 23, 2021October 23, 2021 EMR Writer

Qualifying had it all, surprise results, crashes, saves and drama!

Well well well, that was a qualifying session to remember! Francesco Bagnaia takes pole position in a Ducati 1-2-3 as title rival Fabio Quartararo fails to make it into Q2 for the first time in his premier class MotoGP career.

It started of course with Q1 with both Francesco Bagnaia and Fabio Quartararo being forced to go via the session after failing to secure a top 10 finish in the earlier free practice sessions, we saw Francesco Bagnaia riding with full confidence putting in some pretty scary fast laps in FP4 despite the riders around him all crashing falling like dominoes. Therefore when we arrived to Q1 he was full of confidence leading the session by a full 0.700 seconds over Iker Lecuona who got his first-ever Q2 start.

Q2 began with Marc Marquez taking the centre stage after a heroic high-side save, brushing it off and continuing with the session as he does so well, unfortunately crashing later on into the session alongside many other riders including Jorge Martin who crashed twice, also meeting the gravel trap were both Tech3 riders who held provisional front-row starts before the traditional last lap flurry which demoted the orange pair down to P8 and P9 with Lecuona leading the duo who were unable to attempt to improve their times following their crashes.

Leading the session throughout was Francesco Bagnaia who set the pole position lap time in only his third lap holding a strong 0.600-second lead as the conditions improved and riders slowly but surely ate into the gap with Jack Miller looking incredibly close to taking the top spot in his fastest lap, eventually missing out by a mere 0.025 seconds to his teammate with Luca Marini coming from seemingly nowhere to bang in a superb lap time worthy of P3, demoting Pol Espargaro down to P4.

Taking home a strong P5 was Miguel Oliveira on the KTM who has looked impressive all weekend long leading Franco Morbidelli who also has been absolutely phenomenal, you wouldn’t think he is injured with his performance so far this weekend and P6 is a great highlight of this.

Marc Marquez opened up the third row ahead of the Tech3 trio, Marquez looked to have pace for much more after following Jack Miller around but his hopes and dreams unfortunately ended up in the gravel trap along with Johann Zarco in P10 who crashed and got stuck under his motorcycle.

Q2 Results –