MotoGP Qatar Qualifying: Jorge Martin storms to fifth MotoGP pole position
Jorge Martin adds yet another pole position to his tally in MotoGP.
It was a thrilling MotoGP qualifying session that saw all 12 riders going head to head with the top position trading places plenty of times, Marc Marquez on the brand new Honda was able to battle and trade places with Ducati taking charge as expected thanks to Jack Miller and then Jorge Martin.
Early on into the session Marc Marquez and Joan Mir very nearly came together at 200mph on the front straight with Marquez sitting right in the tow of Mir and playing his usual mind games with the 2020 champion, Mir handed Marquez an excellent tow and Marquez would shoot to the top of the timesheets after jumping out of the slipstream just before contact was made, no doubt Mir will have some things to say about that.
At this point Marquez was the provisional poleman but it didn’t last long with Jack Miller coming and spoiling Honda’s party and taking the top spot at the end of the first run, this also wouldn’t last long with Marc Marquez re-taking the lead on the second run of the session.
From here on out it looked to be the pole of Marc Marquez in his return from injury, however many had forgotten about the silent Jorge Martin who was yet to make an impact on the session, well that was until he blasted his way to the top of the timesheets with a time of 1’53.011 to steal the pole position watch from Marquez and hand the throne back to Ducati. From here his time wouldn’t be beaten but Enea Bastianini made a good show of attempting to do so, very nearly stealing pole position in his final lap, eventually coming home in a super impressive P2 on the debut of the new Gresini Ducati team and demoting Marc Marquez to third place on the grid.
Leading row two would be the earlier provisional poleman of Jack Miller who was joined by Aleix Espargaro who also made a last-ditch attempt at heroics, sadly it wasn’t to be for the Spaniard who could only muster up P5 ahead of his brother in P6.
Brad Binder pushed KTM onto row three after coming through the Q1 session with Joan Mir and Francesco Bagnaia also joining him and Alex Rins rounding out the top 10.
The story today however goes to Yamaha who were sat at the bottom of the Q2 times, completely unable to make an impression with both riders struggling with straight-line speed down the kilometre-long straight in Qatar, despite Fabio’s requests for more speed he has been left without and these are the consequences.
Fabio Quartararo was also forced to go via Q1 which is incredibly unusual for the World Champion given his previous Q2 record, he proved it was only a minor blip as he recovered and was promoted into Q2 alongside Brad Binder.
Zarco set a time good enough for the top two spots in Q1 but lost his time due to a yellow flag thanks to a crash from Darryn Binder.
Full results –
Featured image – Dorna
