Leopard Honda’s Danny Kent has taken pole position for the Moto3 race at tomorrow’s Austin MotoGP round, lapping half a second quicker than Portugal Miguel Oliveira to bag top spot and go under Jack Miller’s circuit best lap for the class
Kent’s 2’15.344, set on his own, was the fastest ever Moto3 lap recorded around the Texas circuit. The British rider seemingly in a league of his own as he was almost half a second faster than the rest of the field, beating Jack Millers pole time from last year by almost a second.
Winning the battle for secondnd place was the Red Bull KTM Ajo bike of the Portuguese rider Miguel Oliveira (+0.485s), with the Italian Andrea Locatelli (+0.746s) on the Gresini Racing Team Moto3 Honda completing the front row.
Niccolo Antonelli on the Ongetta-Rivacold Honda will head the second row ahead of the two Estrella Galicia 0,0 bikes of Jorge Navarro (+0.800s) and Fabio Quartararo (+0.806s).
Isaac Viñales will start from the front of the third row as the leading Husqvarna in 7th, with Enea Bastianini, Francesco Bagnaia and the race winner from Qatar, Alexis Masbou, rounding out the top ten.
There was a nasty incident right at the start of QP when Livio Loi, who was cruising on the racing line, was in collision with John McPhee. Luckily both riders were unhurt and able to rejoin the session.
Nicholas Ajo also crashed out early on, while the red flag was shown with 28 minutes left in the session after Leopard Racing’s Hiroki Ono had a heavy crash at turn 8 and had to be helped off track by the marshals.
