Moto3 Doha FP1: Jaume Masia starts as he means to go on

April 2, 2021April 2, 2021 EMR Writer

Last weekends Moto3 race winner Jaume Masia is the fastest in the FP1 session.

It really is the most wonderful time of the year, MotoGP is back in full swing and we are once again seeing more and more talented riders arriving at the front of the pack with Jaume Masia proving to many why he is one of the favourites for the Moto3 title this year. The Spanish rider took the race win last week by just 0.042 to his teammate Pedro Acosta in second place, this week we return to the same circuit with Masia once again leading the way for the Moto3 boys with a staggering 0.562 gap to Dennis Foggia in second place. Masia’s time is still 1.3 seconds from the lap record held by Darryn Binder, we can expect much faster times later this evening as the track cools down.

In third place behind Masia and Foggia was Filip Salac, the Czech rider posting a time 0.233 behind Foggia, thankfully this is where the gaps begin to shorten between riders as the Moto3 class’ competitiveness shines through. John McPhee finished in P4 behind Salac, he had a tough race weekend last week after being involved in another riders accident, this accident has ruined his plans of starting the season on the right foot, John needs to knuckle down this year if he wants to take this title but as always his bad luck gets the better of him and he scored a DNF through no fault of his own.

There was a surprise in the Honda Team Asia duo behind McPhee with Andi Farid Izdihar in P5 and Yuki Kunii in P6, Kunii is an incredibly talented rider who much like Ogura last year holds more promise than meets the eye, as for Izdihar it is a nice surprise to see him in P5 however it is hard to see where his career can go from here given that he’s a 23-year-old Moto3 rookie who was demoted from Moto2, he finished last weekends race 44 seconds behind the winner and 3 seconds behind Oncu who crashed and remounted.

Xavier Artigas will be hoping for a better weekend this time round, his crash last weekend caused Migno, McPhee and Alcoba all to go down with him and he hasn’t made any friends in Moto3 due to this. The talented 17-year-old is looking for redemption this weekend and finished in P7 ahead of Kaito Toba and Romano Fenati. The top 10 was rounded off by Izan Guevara who is another impressive rookie, he has every chance of taking his first podium this weekend in Qatar.

Kofler finished in P11 after taking his first world championship points last weekend with Binder in P13, further down there were some surprises with last weeks podium finisher Acosta in P20, Suzuki in P25 and Alcoba in last place.

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