MotoGP Silverstone Qualifying: Pol Espargaro takes stunning pole position

August 28, 2021 EMR Writer

Pol Espargaro takes pole position at Silverstone.

Pol Espargaro has done the impossible and has taken pole position at Silverstone on the Repsol Honda. He’s had a torrid time this year since his move from KTM with a best result of P8 in a race and P8 in qualifying, suddenly he’s taken a huge confidence-boosting pole position at Silverstone after saying so many times about how tough his year has been.

The feeling for Pol will be electric now after crashing an unbelievable amount of times all year long, all weekend long he’s been fast but pole position fast? No way. A completely unexpected lap time from the younger Espargaro in his last fast lap took pole position by a tiny 0.022 seconds over Francesco Bagnaia who is chasing his first victory in the class. Of course this wasn’t without drama, it wouldn’t be MotoGP if we didn’t have drama eh?

Originally it was Jorge Martin in pole position with the Spanish rider destroying the lap record beating Espargaro by 1.5 seconds, making this all up in one sector. Now, if you know anything about anything you’ll know making up 1.5 seconds in one lap is difficult, never mind one sector! There was much confusion before it was finally confirmed that Martin had cut a corner demoting him down to fourth place behind Fabio Quartararo handing the pole position to Pol Espargaro.

Fabio Quartararo rounded off the front row as mentioned, the title leader confirming that his bike isn’t going very well over one fast lap but he has the pace for the race, he has a 47 points lead at the top of the standings and will be aiming to push this over 50 to hand him a two-race buffer in the championship giving him some more security.

As mentioned, Jorge Martin leads the head of the second row, the Spanish rookie continues his stunning form this year and has proven to have the pace all weekend long for victory in the class tomorrow on the rather fast Ducati, joining him on row two were Marc Marquez and Aleix Espargaro, Marquez looking more and more like his old self session by session, he fought for victory in Austria and there’s no doubt he will do the same again tomorrow with Aleix Espargaro following suit.

Opening row three was Jack Miller who led the overall timesheets after FP3, unfortunately he was unable to convert this into a strong finish in qualifying but P7 means he is within sniffing distance of the front riders of the pack with Valentino Rossi and Johann Zarco sharing the row with him.

A rider who was nearly handed the chance to fight in Q2 was Enea Bastianini, the Moto2 World Champion blasted in an incredibly strong lap time on a 2-year-old Ducati to lead the session but unfortunately it wasn’t enough with Rins and Zarco doing enough to escape.

Full Q2 Results –