The Spanish rider Aleix Espargaró (Aprilia) has achieved pole this Saturday for the MotoGP races of the Catalunya Grand Prix, the sixth round of the motorcycle World Championship, while the category leader, Jorge Martín (Ducati), will start sixth and Marc Márquez (Ducati), who could not advance to Q2, will do so fourteenth.
With a time of 1:38.190, the absolute track record, the one from Granollers, who this week announced his retirement at the end of the season, confirmed his excellent weekend after dominating Friday’s free practice at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya and signed his first pole since the 2023 Spanish Grand Prix.
“‘Pecco’ has set the bar high. The second lap, with less tyre, was the best of my life in a classification. We have a good pace, yesterday we were one of the few who did not use the ‘soft’,” said Aleix Espargaró after Q2.
The Italian Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati), second, and the South African Brad Binder (KTM) will start with him, while the Murcian Pedro Acosta (KTM) will head the grid row, which will also include the Madrid native Jorge Martín, who suffered a fall in the middle of the fight for pole.
In addition, Raúl Fernández (Aprilia) will start seventh, just ahead of Alex Rins (Yamaha), and Maverick Viñales (Aprilia) will start the event twelfth.
The fight in Montmeló started with a Q1 in which Raúl Fernández (Aprilia) set, alone, a 1:38.453 which was the absolute track record. However, shortly before the end, the Italian Fabio Di Giannantonio (Ducati) improved his bet (1: 38.208) to join him and access Q2.
The Márquez brothers (Ducati) did not succeed, who will start from the fifth row of the grid; Alex will start thirteenth, while Marc will start fourteenth. Neither did Augusto Fernández (KTM) nor Joan Mir (Repsol Honda), who will start nineteenth and twenty-first, respectively.
In the final fight for pole, Bagnaia placed first, close to the time that gave the pass to ‘Diggia’ (1:38.221), and in the second round Jorge Martín (Ducati) went to the ground after a contact with his teammate Franco Morbidelli (Ducati).
In his last attempt, Aleix Espargaró achieved a spectacular 1:38.190 that put him at the head of the session. No one could surpass him and he guaranteed himself pole position, just a few days after announcing that this will be his last year in MotoGP.