Enea Bastianini stormed to pole at Aragon ahead of tomorrow’s Moto3 race, while champion-elect Brad Binder will have to start from the third row.
The Gresini Racing Moto 3 rider set a hot lap of 1’58.293 on just his seventh lap with around 15 minutes of the 45-min session to go, and remarkably it was a time which was to go unchallenged.
The Italian was sitting on provisional pole as the pack did its usual trick of waiting until the final five minutes before really trying to set a quick one.
Binder was lying third and having already stated he wanted to wrap the title up this weekend, the South African was favourite to do something special in the last few minutes
The pack came out en masse with just four minutes to go and what followed was a two-lap scrap which looked just like the opening few laps of a race with everyone vying for track position as the battle for slipstreams started to get messy.
But if Binder had hoped to make up something special in his final rotation, he was set for disappointment. After crossing the line and starting what would be his only fast lap, he was run wide in the melee, ending any change of bettering his position.
All he could do was hope not too many riders were able to go quicker, and in the end the Red Bull KTM Ajo pilot had to settle for seventh and a third row starting position.
Germany’s Philip Oettl was the first of the movers and shakers as he jumped up to third with 25 seconds of the session to go. But the Schedl GP Racing rider wasn’t able to keep hold of it as a final scrum of bikes began to cross the line.
Gabriel Rodrigo leapt up to second position briefly, but the Argentinian’s RBA Racing Team KTM was almost instantly knocked back down to fourth as Jorge Navarro and Livio Loi crossed the line.
Navarro’s Estrella Galicia 0,0 Honda was just 0.015s faster than Loi’s RW Racing GP BV Honda, and the Spaniard took second ahead of tomorrow’s race with Loi third.
Rodrigo held onto fourth ahead of the second Estrella Galicia 0,0 machine of Aron Canet as Oettl dropped to sixth to take the last place on the second row.
Fabio Quartararo was eighth with the Honda Team Asia machine of Hiroki Ono ninth, while Bo Bendsneyder had to settle for 10th.
Britain’s John McPhee will start from 17th, the Peugeot MC Saxoprint rider having improved since this morning and finding the best part of a second to move up 10 places.