Marc Márquez crashed again and will start seventh
MADRID, 21 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Italian rider Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati) took pole position in the MotoGP Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix on Saturday, the fourteenth round of the World Championship, ahead of championship leader Jorge Martín (Ducati), while Marc Márquez (Ducati) will start seventh after suffering another crash in Q2.
At the Misano-Marco Simoncelli International Circuit, ‘Pecco’ lowered the track record by three tenths to claim his twentieth MotoGP pole position, all to beat two other Ducatis, that of Madrid-born Jorge Martín, who is seven points ahead of Bagnaia in the general classification, and that of fellow Italian Enea Bastianini, who was third and will complete the front row of the grid.
After South African Brad Binder (KTM) and Portuguese Miguel Oliveira (Aprilia) secured their passage to Q2, the riders set out to win a hard-fought pole position. Martín started by setting the first benchmark time, but Pedro Acosta (KTM) put in a lot of effort to move up to the top of the timesheets ten minutes from the end.
However, the rider from San Sebastián de los Reyes put everything he could into setting a 1:30.245 to beat the circuit record, just before Marc Márquez (Ducati) suffered his second fall of the morning. Bagnaia got within a tenth of a second of that in his first attempt to overtake him, and in his second he beat his time to set a 1:30.031 and take pole position.
Meanwhile, Pedro Acosta will finally start fifth; Marc Márquez will start seventh, just ahead of Maverick Viñales (Aprilia), and Aleix Espargaró (Aprilia) will start eleventh.
Among the Spaniards who did not make it through to Q2, Raúl Fernández (Aprilia) will start fourteenth, while Joan Mir (Repsol Honda) will start sixteenth. In addition, Augusto Fernández (KTM) will start sixteenth and Alex Márquez (Ducati) will start nineteenth, and Alex Rins (Yamaha), who did not even ride, will not race again this weekend due to discomfort.