Johann Zarco will sign off his Moto2 career in style as he starts from pole for tomorrow’s final race of the year at Valencia.
The newly-crowned champion who heads to MotoGP next season, dominated a strange and relatively uneventful qualifying session to take pole without any serious challenge from anyone.
The Ajo Motorsport rider soared straight to the top of the timesheets early on with a 1’35.264, and slowly kept at it, bringing the time down into the 1’34s over the next 20 minutes.
The first rider that looked like he could be about to topple the double champ was Franco Morbidelli. The Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS rider was on a quick one with just over seven and a half minutes to go, getting under Zarco’s time in all sectors before losing out at the end.
By now, a number of bikes were on track trying to get in a fast one as the clock ticked down. Again Morbidelli was looking strong and then again lost out in the final sector.
Paginas Amarillas HP 40 rider Alex Rins, who’d been having a tough day, finally found something and set the fifth fastest lap as Thomas Luthi, who had also been struggling earlier on, also tried to depose Zarco but was unable to.
With two and a half minutes left of the session, speculation was rife that the track had just gone away from the riders, as the sun began to go down casting longer shadows across the surface and cooling the air and the track.
Another attempt by Luthi resulted in another bad final sector and as he crossed the line just six thousands of a second adrift of Zarco, he had one last chance to do it.
With the flag in sight, the Garage Plus Interwetten rider wasn’t able to better his own time let alone Zarco’s, and neither could Morbidelli, who was also out having another attempt.
It meant the only rider ever to have defended a Moto2 title will start the final race of the season from pole, taking another lap record as he beat that of Pol Espargaro which had stood since 2013.
Luthi starts from second alongside Morbidelli third, while Italtrans Racing Team’s Mattia Pasini heads the second row. Rins managed to hold onto fifth ahead of QMMF Racing Team’s Julian Simon.
Sam Lowes, who hasn’t had the best end to his Moto2 career, will line up seventh in his final race before he too steps up to MotoGP, and he will be joined on the third row by fellow Brit Danny Kent.
Idemitsu Honda Team Asia rider Takaaki Nakagami will start from ninth on the grid ahead of the second Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS machine of Alex Marquez in tenth.