After an opening day of wet practice sessions and several tumbles, qualifying mercifully took place under dry conditions.
MotoGP
MotoGP's qualifying is split into two parts. The riders are separated by virtue of their fastest times in Free Practice. The top 10 automatically qualify for Q2, while the remaining riders take part in Q1, where the two fastest riders join the top 10 in Q2. The remaining riders from Q1 fill in the grid from 13th downwards.
Marc Marquez set a new track record on his Repsol factory Honda, his time of 2'02.135 smashing his time from last year by six tenths of a second. This came after his bike stopped on track with just three minutes left in the session - he sprinted back to the pits, got on his second bike and duly smashed the field.
Ducati rider Andrea Dovizioso will start from second, three tenths behind Marquez, with Jorge Lorenzo third.
Andrea Iannone and Maverick Viñales made it through from Q1, with Iannone starting from seventh, and Viñales 12th.
Hiroshi Aoyama has taken Dani Pedrosa's place on the grid while the Spaniard recovers from arm pump surgery, and he starts from 18th.
1 | (93) Marc Marquez | 2 | (4) Andrea Dovizioso | 3 | (99) Jorge Lorenzo |
4 | (46) Valentino Rossi | 5 | (35) Cal Crutchlow | 6 | (45) Scott Redding |
7 | (29) Andrea Iannone | 8 | (41) Aleix Espagaro | 9 | (44) Pol Espagaro |
10 | (38) Bradley Smith | 11 | (9) Danilo Petrucci | 12 | (25) Maverick Viñales |
13 | (8) Hector Barbera | 14 | (6) Stefan Bradl | 15 | (68) Yonny Hernandez |
16 | (63) Mike Di Meglio | 17 | (50) Eugene Laverty | 18 | (7) Hiroshi Aoyama |
19 | (43) Jack Miller | 20 | (76) Loris Baz | 21 | (17) Karel Abraham |
22 | (69) Nicky Hayden | 23 | (19) Alvaro Bautista | 24 | (15) Alex De Angelis |
25 | (15) Marco Melandri |
Moto2
Xavier Simeon took the Moto2 pole on his last lap, pipping Sam Lowes by 0.054 seconds after the Brit decided to sit out the last few minutes of the session after crashing. Defending champion Tito Rabat will start from third after looking particularly quick in qualifying.
Axel Pons did not set a time in qualifying, so it remains to be seen if he takes to the grid tomorrow.
1 | (19) Xavier Simeon | 2 | (22) Sam Lowes | 3 | (1) Tito Rabat |
4 | (5) Johann Zarco | 5 | (21) Franco Morbidelli | 6 | (30) Takaaki Nakagami |
7 | (60) Julian Simon | 8 | (40) Alex Rins | 9 | (77) Dominique Aegerter |
10 | (23) Marcel Schrotter | 11 | (36) Mika Kallio | 12 | (3) Simone Corsi |
13 | (95) Anthony West | 14 | (39) Luis Salom | 15 | (55) Hafizh Syahrin |
16 | (11) Sandro Cortese | 17 | (12) Thomas Luthi | 18 | (4) Randy Krummenacher |
19 | (94) Jonas Folger | 20 | (88) Ricard Cardus | 21 | (7) Lorenzo Baldassarri |
22 | (96) Louis Rossi | 23 | (73) Alex Marquez | 24 | (25) Azlan Shah |
25 | (70) Robin Mulhauser | 26 | (10) Thitipong Warokorn | 27 | (66) Florian Alt |
28 | (51) Zaqhwan Zaidi | 29 | (2) Jesko Raffin | XX | (49) Axel Pons |
Moto3
Moto3 qualifying most definitely belonged to Danny Kent. The Leopard Racing Brit, who earlier in the day set the fastest lap around COTA on a Moto3 bike in the 3 years the championship has visited, then broke that record by posting a time of 2'15.344, a second faster than last year's pole time. His time was 0.5sec faster than second-placed Red Bull KTM rider Miguel Oliveira, with Gresini's Andrea Locatelli a further 0.26sec behind. The rest of the field was split by just 3.2 seconds.
Expect the race to be the usual cluster party that Moto3 invariably is, but Kent will feel confident in getting away and making the rest chase him.
1 | (52) Danny Kent | 2 | (44) Miguel Oliveira | 3 | (55) Andrea Locatelli | 4 | (23) Niccolò Antonelli |
5 | (9) Jorge Navarro | 6 | (20) Fabio Quartararo | 7 | (32) Isaac Viñales | 8 | (33) Enea Bastianini |
9 | (21) Francesco Bagnaia | 10 | (10) Alexis Masbou | 11 | (41) Brad Binder | 12 | (88) Jorge Martin |
13 | (58) Juanfran Guevara | 14 | (11) Livio Loi | 15 | (17) John McPhee | 16 | (7) Efren Vazquez |
17 | (76) Hiroki Ono | 18 | (95) Jules Danilo | 19 | (5) Romano Fenati | 20 | (98) Karel Hanika |
21 | (31) Niklas Ajo | 22 | (16) Andrea Migno | 23 | (84) Jakub Kornfeil | 24 | (12) Matteo Ferrari |
25 | (25) Stefano Manzi | 26 | (19) Alessandro Tonucci | 27 | (2) Remy Gardner | 28 | (63) Zulfahmi Khairuddin |
29 | (24) Tatsuki Suzuki | 30 | (91) Gabriel Rodrigo) | 31 | (6) Maria Herrera | 32 | (65) Philipp Oettl |
33 | (22) Ana Carrasco | 34 | (40) Darryn Binder |