Qualifying report
Extraordinary performance by Jorge Martin in qualifying for the Australian Grand Prixwith the Spaniard from Pramac relaunching the challenge to Francesco Bagnaia for the world championship not only by conquering the third pole position of the season, but also and above all by also signing the new track record at Phillip Islandenjoying an advantage of almost half a second on his direct pursuers. Contrary to what happened at Mandalika in Q1, this time Francesco Bagnaia manages to easily move on to the next phase, also setting the best time 1:28.160. Keeping him company is the official Honda of Marc Marquez, engaged in a nice timing duel in the final with his brother Alex and Augusto Fernandez, who were however eliminated by the eight-time world champion. Nothing to do for the two Italians: while Luca Marini finished in eighth position in Q1 (18th on the grid), with the result influenced by the muscle pain suffered by the Mooney VR46 team driver, Franco Morbidelli did even worse, who in the race will start from penultimate place on the starting grid. The heart of the action obviously comes in Q2, which is decisive for assigning pole position: in this phase he becomes the absolute protagonist ‘Martinator’which with the time of 1:27.246 not only does he conquer first place on the starting grid, but he also sets the track record at Phillip Island. A performance that allows the Pramac Spaniard to generate a gap of almost half a second from Binder, 2nd, and from Bagnaia, thus closing the front row with great personal satisfaction. Further back are Fabio Di Giannantonio and Marco Bezzecchi, in sixth and tenth place respectively. Outside the Top-10, and more precisely in 12th place, is Enea Bastianini. Due to the potentially adverse weather forecast for tomorrow, it is worth remembering the change of plans made official yesterday for this weekend: at 06:10 Italian today, in fact, the Sprint race, postponed to Sunday, will not take place, but rather the long race of the Australian Grand Prix, live on Sky Sports MotoGP and deferred in clear on TV8 at 1.30pm.
1st, Jorge Martin – Ducati Pramac
“I just think that today’s race will be long and we don’t have much information to understand the tyres. It will be complicated, but I felt good with everything I did, and we hope to have a good race and try to win. I didn’t think I’d make progress, the tire didn’t seem fantastic to me, so much so that the one I’d used before seemed better, but I pushed like an animal to try to set this record. I thought I could drop 1-2 tenths, but in the end with half a second it wasn’t that bad. You never know what can happen in the race, you will have to manage the tires very well, because if you wear them out straight away you will be recovered. The important thing will be to manage them, but it will be a long race.”
2nd, Brad Binder – KTM
“It’s always easier to get to the front row and start from there. Obviously by starting well you manage the race well from the start, the bike worked well throughout the weekend and so I thank the team for doing a fantastic job. I can’t wait to start the race. The key factor of the race will be tire wear, and therefore who will be able to manage them best until the end. Jorge is definitely in incredible shape now, it seems like he has an ‘extra’ in his pocket, but we’ll see what happens in the race. We will try to push from start to finish.”
3rd, Francesco Bagnaia – Ducati
“I am very satisfied. Our weekend strategy can sometimes make us lose a bit of time for the time attack, but in the end we always work hard and this allowed us to have two soft tires for Q2. It was fundamental in my opinion, and being on the front row is always fantastic, it was our goal today and we can only be happy. We did a lot of laps on the medium rear, which I think is the race tyre, so we are ready for anything. The unknown is the front tire because it’s starting to get a little cooler, but we’ll see. We have to push, I tried to be as alone as possible and we saw that when we started there was quite a mess, but we waited a little longer and Marc was behind me, but I knew that with a perfect lap I would be able to keep up with him ahead anyway.”
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