The Beast Blitzes Field In Barcelona

Jun 13, 2015
2 min read

Gresini Honda rider Enea Bastianini blew away the competition after taking his first ever pole position in Grand Prix racing. The Italian has looked fast all weekend and found an insane amount of time on his final flying lap to set a 1:50.137 which is the fastest ever Moto3 lap around the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. What made Bastianini's lap even more impressive was that it was done in clear air and without the benefit of a tow.

Traffic was a huge problem, with the final 6-minutes of qualifying being inundated with idling riders looking for a tow. This caught out some; Isaac Vinales will start a lowly 20th, whilst Juanfran Guevara, Francescon Bagnaia and Brad Binder start just ahead. It seems likely a large amount of penalty points will be handed out later today after race direction look into the incident.

Danny Kent looked comfortable heading into qualifying and was the only other rider able to get near Bastianini's stunning pole time. The Leopard Racing rider was caught up in a melee of riders on his final lap, so it could have been even better for him. Jorge Navarro came from making a mistake at turn one with three-minutes to go to completing the front row after a stellar final effort form the EG 0,0 Honda rider.

Niccolo Antonelli and Miguel Oliveira round out the top five.

Efren Vazquez languished outside the top ten following the final free practice session, but found a tow a pulled himself through the traffic to go 6th, with Fabio Quartararo 7th, Niklas Ajo 8th, Philipp Oettl 9th and Hiroki Ono 10th.

John McPhee has found life tough-going on the RTG Honda of late, but found a little something in qualifying to go 11th fastest. The Scotsman tested some set-up changes prior to this weekend and they look to have made a small difference, but not enough. In consolation he did out-qualify team-mate Alexis Masbou by quite a margin, with the French rider down in 24th.

Maria Herrera impressed on the Husqvarna in 14th. Though not her best qualifying she did convincingly beat her highly rated team-mate Isaac Vinales in 20th. She's shown that she's got the pace around this circuit, so if it's going to be a typical 16-rider slipstream affair tomorrow she may be able to sneak a strong result.

Livio Loi's day went from bad to worse. The Belgian crashed in FP3 and did the same again at the start of qualifying. He was unhurt and was able to rejoin, but only to 29th. That's unfortunate seeing as he'd been a top ten regular so far this weekend.

Qualifying Top 10:

1st Enea Bastianini, Gresini Team Moto3 Honda, 1:50.137

2nd Danny Kent, Leopard Racing Honda, 1:50.281

3rd Jorge Navarro, EG 0,0 Honda, 1:50.840

4th Niccolo Antonelli, Ongetta-Rivacold Honda, 1:50.848

5th Miguel Oliveira, Red Bull KTM Ajo, 1:50.857

6th Efren Vazquez, Leopard Racing Honda, 1:50.894

7th Fabio Quartararo, EG 0,0 Honda, 1:50.896

8th Niklas Ajo, RBA Racing Team KTM, 1:51.113

9th Philipp Oettl, Schedl GP KTM, 1:51.265

10th Hiroki Ono, Leopard Racing Honda, 1:51.290

Full results can be found here: