Bagnaia takes Aragon GP pole after breaking lap record

Francesco Bagnaia set a Motorland lap record after dominating qualifying for the Aragon GP and claiming his fifth pole position of the MotoGP season.

In Saturday’s MotoGP qualifying session at Aragon, Francesco Bagnaia led a Ducati front-row lockout, with his title rivals Aleix Espargaro and Fabio Quartararo finishing on the second row.

Gresini rider Enea Bastianini was in the lead after the first few runs in Q2, but Bagnaia turned in a record-breaking 1m46.069s lap to claim his fifth pole position of the year.

Bagnaia’s factory Ducati teammate Jack Miller came the closest to unseating Pecco but was 0.090s slower, while Bastianini who was another tenth and a half seconds slower, locked out the front row.

Although Espargaro had to compete in Q1 and lost the first lap on his final run after driving wide at Turn 1, Bastianini was unable to find the same degree of improvement as the factory two and was forced to settle for the final slot on the front row in third.

Pramac Ducati’s Johann Zarco finished fifth, joining Espargaro who finished fourth in advancing from the first qualifying round. Quartararo finished sixth, an unsettling 0.733s behind Bagnaia’s record, after continuing to lack the power to be competitive in the final sector of the lap.

The highest-finishing rookie for VR46 was Marco Bezzecchi in seventh place, ahead of Jorge Martin, who recovered from an earlier FP4 crash to finish eighth, ahead of Suzuki’s Alex Rins and Brad Binder’s factory KTM rounding out the top ten.

Miguel Oliveira came in P11 marking the second KTM RC16 as he came within three-tenths of a second of unseating Binder from the top ten. Takaaki Nakagami finished 12th among the competitors in the pole shootout.

Six-time premier world champion Marc Marquez had outstanding pace on his comeback to the MotoGP through practice. The Honda rider was obviously the big name who didn’t qualify for Q2.

Marquez ultimately suffered from badly timed yellow flags on his final run in qualifying, which prevented him from setting a competitive final lap and forced him to settle for 13th on the grid for Sunday’s Aragon GP, albeit he will probably advance from there.

Mooney VR46 rider Luca Marini finished only 14th after appearing strong in practice, ahead of Aprilia’s Maverick Vinales, who crashed at Turn 2 on his crucial final Q1 gambit, marking his first crash on the RS-GP this season.

The yellow flag period, which was ironically started by Marquez’s Honda teammate Pol Espargaro, also prevented anyone else from going faster.

Cal Crutchlow, a seasoned Yamaha test rider who was making his first start of the season with the RNF Racing team, managed to edge factory Yamaha racer Franco Morbidelli by just over a tenth, finishing 19th to Morbidelli’s 20th.

Remy Gardner finished second in the Tech 3 KTM battle, with Augusto Fernandez taking first place ahead of him in 21st, while Darryn Binder’s second RNF Yamaha finished the field in 23rd.

ARAGON MOTOGP FULL QUALIFYING RESULTS