Alex Marquez’s run of form continued with another appearance in the second quarter, improving his best MotoGP grid position, while Stefan Bradl just missed a top 12 spot as he continued to go faster.
The pace continued to improve in Free Practice 3 on Saturday morning. The top 14 fell into the 1’47s and the entire field was split by 1.1 seconds as the session ended. For Alex Marquez, however, this was not a problem. He improved his overall best to 1,47546, more than half a second faster than in his previous second quarter, and again granted him direct access to the second quarter. As always, Alex produced a consistent Free Practice 4 session while reviewing various options for Sunday’s race.
His FP3 time would be Alex’s best time of the day, and the rookie just missed out on improving the time in the second quarter. Nevertheless, Alex will be in tenth place for tomorrow’s race and achieve a new best starting position in his rookie campaign. Alex qualified as the lead rookie and ahead of championship leader Joan Mir.
Stefan Bradl wrote another impressive day on which the HRC test driver recorded steady improvements and constantly questioned the established order. In the event of a fall in turn 2 in RP4, the German left unharmed and returned to the race track shortly afterwards. The fall didn’t hurt Stefan’s speed, as he produced his first 1’47 of the weekend in the first quarter, his 1’47.585 over a second and a half faster than his Q1 time from the previous week. On the lap he would have finished sixth on the grid at the Aragon GP, but Bradl will start the Teruel GP from 16th on the grid – his best starting position of the year.
After an incredible lap of 1’46.882 minutes by LCR Honda’s Takaaki Nakagami, he became the first Japanese rider to take pole position in MotoGP since Makoto Tamada on the Camel Honda in 2004. Nakagami is currently 29 points ahead of the World Cup lead because he wants to achieve his first top 3 result in the premier class tomorrow.
The 23-lap GP in Teruel on Sunday is expected to start at 1:00 p.m. local time, shortly after the Moto3 race with a revised schedule. The day begins with the warm-up for the premier class at 9:50 a.m. local time.