Bastianini Steals Moto3 Pole at Aragon

Sep 26, 2015
2 min read

Enea Bastianini stole the limelight from Miguel Oliveira in the dying moments of Moto3 qualifying to take his second consecutive pole position.

The young Italian had impressed in Friday practice but throughout the qualifying session it looked increasingly likely that Spaniard Miguel Oliveira would start from the front after setting a new pole position record with the help of a useful tow from Ana Carrasco. However, with his last effort of the session, Bastianini went exactly two tenths quicker than Oliveira and set a new pole position record at the Aragon circuit.

Danny Kent was increasingly frustrated with trying to get a clear effort on his qualifying runs but eventually managed to take third place on his last lap and was only one thousandth of a second behind Oliveira. The lap means that the championship leader will start on the front row alongside his title rival Bastianini with the hope of beating him to extend his current 55 points lead.

Elsewhere, Jorge Martin recorded his personal best qualifying performance of the season to start fourth ahead of his countryman Jorge Navarro who continued to recover from his crash at the previous race weekend. Niccolo Antonelli left it extremely late to claim sixth place after emerging from the pits with just two minutes remaining in the session.

Efren Vazquez had topped the final practice session on Saturday morning but could only manage eighth behind Alexis Masbou. Meanwhile, Phillip Oettl and last year's race winner Romano Fenati completed the top ten. Sena Yamada, who is substituting for the injured Fabio Quartararo this weekend, will start an impressive 23rd place. Andrea Locatelli, however, decided to withdraw from the weekend after suffering with pain following his crash at Misano which caused a sacrum fracture.

Moto3 Qualifying Results Top10:

Pole - Enea BASTIANINI, 1m57.755s

2nd - Miguel OLIVEIRA, +0.200s

3rd - Danny KENT, +0.201s

4th - Jorge MARTIN, +0.657s

5th - Jorge NAVARRO, +0.689s

6th - Niccolo ANTONELLI, +0.710s

7th - Alexis MASBOU, +0.718s

8th - Efren VAZQUEZ, +0.722s

9th - Phillip OETTL, +0.750s

10th - Romano FENATI, +0.760s.

Full Moto3 Qualifying Results available here: http://resources.motogp.com/files/results/2015/ARA/Moto3/QP/Classification.pdf?v1_c74e0192