Fenati Claims Maiden Pole At Motegi

Oct 10, 2015
2 min read

Romano Fenati secured his first Moto3 pole position of his career after seeing off a challenge from Miguel Oliveira and Jorge Navarro.

The Italian rider's previous best qualifying of the year was a third place at his home race at Mugello earlier in the season. Fenati surprised the Moto3 paddock by taking pole position for the Japanese Grand Prix with a 1m56.484s to edge out Aragon winner Miguel Oliveira by 0.173s and a further tenth of a second to Jorge Navarro completing the front row.

Niccolo Antonelli was favourite for pole position after being fastest in all three practice sessions prior to qualifying but crashed late on in the session and had to settle for fourth place. Enea Bastianini qualified fifth but his main rival for the championship Danny Kent is alongside him in sixth. Kent leads Bastianini by 55 points currently after the pair dramatically crashed out on the last lap at Aragon. Both riders will be looking for a return to form on Sunday.

The third row will be headed by Isaac Vinales who was 0.533s slower than pole-sitter Fenati. Jakub Kornfeil will start eighth ahead of an impressive ride from Livio Loi. The young Belgian rider who won at the Indianapolis Grand Prix has been showing consistently strong pace throughout the weekend and will be hoping for a good result in tomorrow's race. Brad Binder qualified a disappointing tenth almost half a second slower than his teammate Oliveira. As is common in Moto3, the first to thirteenth were covered by just eight tenths of a second.

Moto3 Japanese Grand Prix Qualifying Top 10:

POLE - Romano FENATI, 1m56.484s

2nd - Miguel OLIVEIRA, +0.173s

3rd - Jorge NAVARRO, +0.236s

4th - Niccolo ANTONELLI, +0.403s

5th - Enea BASTIANINI, +0.443s

6th - Danny KENT, +0.514s

7th - Isaac VINALES, +0.533s

8th - Jakub KORNFEIL, +0.605s

9th - Livio LOI, +0.608s

10th - Brad BINDER, +0.663s

Full Moto3 Qualifying Results available here: http://resources.motogp.com/files/results/2015/JPN/Moto3/QP/Classification.pdf?v1_935649c7