Enea Bastianini of Gresini Racing will start from pole position in tomorrow’s Austrian Grand Prix race at the Red Bull Ring, while Bagnaia and Miller will keep him company on the title line of the MotoGP starting grid. How’s Fabio? AustrianGP qualification results.
Qualifying for the Austrian Grand Prix in reality consisted of two halves – Q1 and Q2. It sounds corny, yes, if not for one moment: Aleix Espargaro did not get into Q2 according to the results of FP3 – he was squeezed out of the TOP 10. The main pursuer of the MotoGP leader was slightly nervous, which was noticeable on his face after morning practice. Firstly, Alyosha is still not 100% recovered from the fracture of his right leg; secondly, he risks losing too many points at the Red Bull Ring – not Quartararo, but Francesco Bagnaia!
Meanwhile, Bagnaia and Co. – most of the Ducati pilots’ clips passed in Q2. Di Gianantonio, Luca Marini and Marco Bezzecchi had to enter the prequalification. In Q1 were: all four Honda; Dovizioso, Morbidelli and Darrin Binder – 3 out of 4 Yamaha; Raul Fernandez and Miguel Olivera from KTM. The Espargaro brothers made two serious attempts to break into Q2, but Di Gianantonio knocked Paul out of the TOP 2 under the checkered flag! Luca Marini was very close to the same but lost to his colleague by less than 0.04 seconds. But Aleix Espargaro passed!
As a result, 6 out of 8 Ducati prototypes, two Aprilia, two Suzuki, one KTM (Brad Binder), and one Yamaha (Fabio Quartararo) entered the 15-minute Q2.
Despite a few early breakdowns in the new chicane, Pekko Bagnaya was firmly in the TOP 5, led by Jack Miller and Enea Bastianini. In the last minutes, Banyaya went to pole position, but was overthrown from there by the Beast! The change happened literally at the very last moment, after the appearance of the checkered flag: Bastianini set a new Red Bull Ring record – 1:28.772
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But all the attention at that moment was focused on the final fast lap of the Quartararo. Fabio failed on the 3rd line during Q2, but each time he rose to the 2nd. So on the last lap, he made a new breakthrough. As before, he shone in the first three sectors!!! Before entering the 4th sector, the leader of the MotoGP championship went to pole position with a minimum lead of 0.002-0.004 seconds ahead of Bastianini, but the statistics were spoiled by the 4th sector again, especially the last two turns – he also lost 0.052 seconds in the 8th, and when he reached the main straight from the last, the gap from Ducati increased to 0.231 seconds – stability was maintained throughout the weekend (0.2 seconds plus or minus). But this allowed Quarararo to go to the 5th position, that is, to confirm the start from the 2nd line. Alyosha Espargaro missed the first two and closed the 3rd.
The first line of the grid was occupied by Bastianini, Bagnaia, and Miller; Jorge Martin and Joan Zarco had already taken Fabio Quartararo into the “box”… the start of the Austrian Grand Prix will be hot!
Austrian MotoGP Grand Prix qualifying results (20/08/2022):
Starting grid of the Austrian MotoGP Grand Prix 2022:
