Pecco Bagnaia took pole position for MotoGP's French Grand Prix at Le Mans, prevailing in a four-way battle covered by an infinitesimal 0.065s.
Bagnaia was briefly looked at by the FIM stewards post-session for potentially getting in the way of rival Fabio Di Giannantonio coming out of Garage Vert on the latter's final lap - but swiftly cleared.
Ducati team-mate Marc Marquez had blitzed Q1, setting the new MotoGP record lap of Le Mans, but neither Marquez nor anybody else came close to that benchmark in Q2.
Aprilia's championship leader Marco Bezzecchi had led the way after the initial Q2 runs, and improved his time afterwards - but came up 0.023s short of Bagnaia's pole and 0.11s short of Marquez in second.
Di Giannantonio was up after three sectors at the very end, despite the Bagnaia run-in, but couldn't string the fourth sector together and had to settle for fourth on the grid.
Despite a gravel-tracking moment early on Pedro Acosta salvaged fifth place as the lead KTM, while home hero Fabio Quartararo was the lead Yamaha in a spectacular sixth, just 0.197s off pole.
A two-tenths deficit from pole for Honda and Joan Mir was only good enough for seventh. He was followed by Jorge Martin (Aprilia), Ai Ogura (Trackhouse Aprilia) and Alex Marquez (Gresini Ducati).
The younger Marquez had a fall through the Dunlop chicane early in Q2, but remounted quickly. Though 10th, he was only 0.297s off pole.
The final two riders in Q2, Johann Zarco (LCR Honda) and Alex Rins (Yamaha), got nowhere near challenging for that top 10.
1 Bagnaia 2 M Marquez 3 Bezzecchi
4 Di Giannantonio 5 Acosta 6 Quartararo
7 Mir 8 Martin 9 Ogura
10 A Marquez 11 Zarco 12 Rins
13 Fernandez 14 Bastianini 15 Marini
16 Morbidelli 17 Razgatlioglu 18 Moreira
19 Miller 20 Aldeguer 21 Binder
22 Folger
Raul Fernandez missed Q2 for the third time in five attempts this season, coming up a tenth and a half short of surpassing Quartararo in Q1.
But he was also half a second up on the next-fastest rider in what was an unusually spread-out Q1, with former rookie team-mates Enea Bastianini and Luca Marini, 14th and 15th on the grid, both over a second off Marquez's Q1 benchmark.
It was a disappointing session for an on-form Bastianini but even more so for KTM stablemate Brad Binder, 21st in the order and closer to KTM injury stand-in Jonas Folger in 22nd than Marquez at the top of Q1.
from The Race https://ift.tt/wUmb98G
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