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The 2021 MotoGP World Championship is not sentenced. Pecco bagnaia has given a real display this Saturday in changing conditions to stay with a pole position that is gold. 1: 33.045, a slow time compared to his same one a month ago but dazzling considering the humidity of the track.
The Bagnaia show contrasts with the Fabio Quartararo disaster. The Frenchman has had enough of trying, but was unable to make it through Q1. He will start fifteenth, because to top it all they have canceled his best time due to yellow flags. It is his worst qualifying in MotoGP and the first time he is not in Q2. He couldn't have chosen a worse time.
Marc Márquez made an epic save, but fell minutes later
Bagnaia also had to go through Q1, but seeing his superiority it is even suspicious that he did not do so to arrive with better feelings in Q2. He made the cut with great reliability and at no time has anyone threatened him for pole position. The most positive thing is that the race pace in FP4 was also much higher.
But it is also that the party inside the Ducati garage is complete. Jack Miller finished second, just a few thousandths behind Bagnaia. He is the only one who had a pole option, but lost it in the last quarter. Luca Marini will leave third with another Ducati, in his best result of the year. Valentino Rossi's brother flew in the wet.
In fact the only Ducati that has not been in Q2 is that of Enea Bastianini, who has fallen twice during Q1. The same has happened to Jorge Martín already in Q2, so he will start twelfth, while Johann Zarco, who also crawled on the ground, will start tenth. They will be stones on the road to Quartararo.
Outside of the Ducati festival, the best bike has been Pol Espargaró's, who brushed the front row but will finally finish fourth. Save the honor of Honda, because Marc Márquez has had an ill-fated Q2. First, he almost suffered a dangerous highside, and in the last minutes he could not avoid a fall that left him in seventh position.
If Espargaró is the good news for Honda, for Yamaha it is Franco Morbidelli, who had great speed to go directly to Q2 and once there he scored the sixth best place. It is the best-placed Yamaha on the grid, since Andrea Dovizioso starts before last and Valentino Rossi starts last his career of farewell to Misano.
Great performance by Miguel Oliveira, who has planted himself in a solvent fifth position with the KTM and tomorrow will want to ward off the crisis with a podium. The two Tech3 bikes were also in Q2, in the case of Iker Lecuona beating Q1, but there was no luck. They both fell off so Lecuona comes out eighth and Danilo Petrucci, ninth.
In general, the classification has been plagued with falls. Another one that failed was Joan Mir, who was unable to pass Q1, like his Suzuki teammate, Álex Rins. The Hamamatsu bikes will start thirteenth and nineteenth, with the reigning world champion only ahead of Brad Binder, Dovizioso, Michele Pirro and Rossi.
The best Aprilia, and the only one in Q2, is Aleix Espargaró, eleventh, while Maverick Viñales will start seventeenth. Bad luck has reared with Lorenzo Savadori, who was doing a 'wild card' but has injured his clavicle in a fall and both this race and the one in Portimao will be lost.
