Pedro Acosta “happy and calm”| Bagnaia poised to punish Martin’s mistake?
Pedro Acosta s🐼tarts from ༒a MotoGP pole for the first time, Francesco Bagnaia nine places clear of title rival Jorge Martin.
You need a little luck in racing sometimes and a track limits penalty for 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Marc Marquez handed 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Pedro Acosta his first MotoGP pole position at Motegi on Saturday.
The GASGAS Tech3 rookie had been only 0.150s behind Marquez’s cancelled lap record and, most impressively, 0.643s clear of the next best KTM of fu🅠ture team-mateജ Brad Binder.
💫Fourth in Friday practice, Acosta advanced to second place on S⛄aturday morning and then P1 in qualifying.
“Super❀ nice! It's a long tim🦩e that I didn’t see the '1' in front of my bike [in parc ferme],” smiled Acosta.
“We have to be happy because we see that in the last 4-5 races, we can put everything togethe🌊r and are getting more competitive.
“I’m happy because we are getting closer to𒁏 the targets we want to achieve. For this, we need to be happy and calm for this afternoon.”
Crucially, Acosta also looks to have the mid 1m 44s race pace to challenge the likes of Francesco B🍃agnaia, quickest in final prac🀅tice and the strongest on used tyres this morning.
While Acosta was a contender throughout the damp qualifying, Bagnaia initially struggled fo♋r grip and abandoned his opening run early.
But Bagnaia was transformed after the tyre change, securing what becameꦇ second on the grid despite yellow flags on his next lap.
Those yellows were in response to a mistake by title leader Jorge Martin, who crashed out at Turn 6 and will st꧑art from just eleventh on the grid.
Martin’s mistake has presented Bagnaia with a big opportunity to regain ground i𓃲n the title chase. The factory Ducati star will begin this afternoon’s Sprint 21 points behind the Pramac Ducati rider.
“Super important,” Bagnaia said of the qualifying result. “At the start, I thought it was getting wet because so🐲mething was wrong on my bike.
“But I decided to🐽 stop and when I restarted eve🐟rything was okay again. So I was able to do a very good lap time.
“I missed a💯 bit on the last lap but there were yellow flags in any case.
“Happy overall. 🥀We have a good chance today and tomorrow with this kin⭕d of grid [Martin 11th] and we have to take it in a good way.”
Maverick Vinales made it three brands on tღhe front row with a surprise third for Aprilia.
“I’m really happy and satꦛisfied about the performance,” Vinales said. “We know this is not the best track for Aprilia but we keep making steps forward ꦏand when I feel good, when I feel that the bike is doing what I like, I can do amazing lap times.
“Today we did it, so it was nice. At the same time, it was pretඣty curious that it was raining but the track was quite dry and we could push to the limit. I’m really excited. I love Japan so I always want to be on the podium here. I will do my best and we’ll see after the race.”
Enea Bastianini (Du🦩cati), Brad Binder (KTM) and Franco Morbidelli (Pramac) will form the second row of the grid.
💯Marquez will start from ninth after his cancelle𒆙d lap.
Peter has been in the paddock for 20 years and has seen Valentino Rossi come and go. He is at the forefront of the Suzuki exit story and Marc Marquez’s injury💟 issues.
