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Fog, cold and a light rain were present throughout the day at Misano. This forced the MotoGP riders to ride cautiously from the start of FP3, both with slick and wet tyres, in a session in which there were several crashes.
Pol Espargaró went straight into Q2 after setting the sixth best time in FP3. In Q2, he kept up his pace and made steady improvement to rise up the timesheets.
As the chequered flag fell, he dropped from third to fourth by just 0.183s, with a best time of 1:33.313.
Just like his teammate, Marc Márquez also qualified directly for Q2. The Repsol Honda team rider suffered a crash during Q2 that prevented him from improving his times.
He will start from the third row tomorrow, after setting a best time of 1:33.850.
Rider Statements
“If we look at the final time sheets, today wasn’t a bad day as seventh place is more or less our position here, like Misano 1. But it’s true that I wasn’t able to take profit from the situation and I couldn’t perform how I wanted to. In Q2 I already had a big warning in the first lap and then I did an OK lap but when I tried to push for something more the feeling wasn’t there. In the past I enjoyed saving crashes, but the save I made today was not as fun as the position was a lot more extreme and it caused me to lose some confidence. On the last lap I said ‘ok, maybe I crash’ and I crashed. For tomorrow it’s looking like more normal conditions so I think we can put together a good race but maybe the podium is one step too far at the moment.”
“The conditions today were super tricky. In the morning in the wet I was really struggling to put one whole lap together and I really had to risk a lot to get into Q2. But for sure it was good to achieve this, it was a weight off my shoulders. All today we saw how tough it was and Q1 was even worse. I was quite confident going into Q2 because I knew in the dry I was ahead of a lot of riders, even if the conditions were still difficult. If you went just a tiny bit wide the track was wet, it was tough but I am really happy. The first two rows are very important here with the tight first sector so I am pleased. Tomorrow the plan is to push right from the start because there is a lot of competition around us.”