Maverick Viñales will start third and Marc Márquez suffers a fall
MADRID, 29 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Italian rider Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati) has been awarded pole position for the MotoGP races of the Dutch Grand Prix, the eighth round of the motorcycle World Championship, ahead of the Spaniards Jorge Martín (Ducati) and Maverick Viñales (Aprilia), while Marc Márquez (Ducati) suffered a fall and will start seventh.
Bagnaia thus signed his first pole of the season and the nineteenth of his career in the premier class, a position from which he will try to close the gap on leader Martín, who is currently 18 points ahead of him. Alongside the Italian and the rider from San Sebastián de los Reyes, Viñales will start on the front row, having finished four tenths behind the poleman.
After a Q1 in which Pedro Acosta (KTM) and the Italian Fabio di Giannantonio (Ducati) secured the pass, Bagnaia took the lead in the final session with a spectacular 1:31.0 that pushed his main rival to the limit, Jorge Martin.
The leader responded to the avoid with a display of explosiveness that made him improve the time and leave it at an incredible 1:30.877, dropping below 1:31 for the first time, but ‘Pecco’ kept up the fight with a stratospheric record of 1:30.540 at five minutes left.
While Marc Márquez (Ducati) crashed in turn 7 a few seconds from the end, suffering his tenth crash of the season, Martín still had time to lower his time, but it was not enough for him to overtake Bagnaia, from whom he was separated 81 thousandths.
In addition, Alex Márquez (Ducati) and Aleix Espargaró (Aprilia), recovered from his hard fall on Friday, completed the ‘Top 5’, and Marc Márquez finished seventh despite leaving the session early. Acosta will start tenth and Raúl Fernández (Aprilia), twelfth.
Among those who did not make it to Q2, Alex Rins (Yamaha) will start sixteenth, Joan Mir (Repsol Honda) twentieth and Augusto Fernández (KTM) twenty-second.