Michael Scott | September 22, 2018
2018 Aragon MotoGP Saturday Results
Aragon qualifying was The Three Tops show again. The trio which has dominated every qualifying and race since the summer break did it again, with the factory Ducatis dominant, and Marquez’s brinkmanship on the Honda keeping him within mere hundredths.
2018 Aragon MotoGP Saturday Results
It was a third pole in a row for Jorge Lorenzo, whose prediction of a 1’46.8 lap proved spot on. But he left it to the end of the session, slotting the time in just a few hundred metres behind team-mate Andrea Dovizioso, who had just narrowly displaced session leader Marquez.
The Honda rider didn’t improve on his first-run time, but might have done so had he not wasted several laps playing after-you-Claude with Dovi. In the end, the Italian timed his escape perfectly, while Marquez admitted that, while he was chasing, “I did a few mistakes, so then I said: OK, it’s time to think for tomorrow.”
Dovi was surprised with his lap time, “faster than I expected, also because I couldn’t find a clean lap, so I lost something.” He’d had to overtake Bautista in the last corners. “The life of the tyre we will understand during the race, but the speed is there,” he said.
Lorenzo had the advantage of this pair in sight ahead of him, though he too complained of “too many traffic, like Moto3”. He’d set his time in spite of a rear tyre that wasn’t as good as that in his first run, that was sliding a lot.
Less than two tenths down, Cal Crutchlow’s LCR Castrol Honda headed the second row, after once again the Briton’s bid to improve still further ended in a crash, as happened at Misano. It was his second fall of the day, neither injurious.
Andrea Iannone (Ecstar Suzuki) did some canny following to slot into fifth; while Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda) was sixth, his best qualifying since he as on the front row at the start of the European season in Spain.
Row three has independent Ducati riders Danilo Petrucci and Alvaro Bautista heading Alex Rins on the second Suzuki; second Pramac Ducati rider Jack Miller was disappointed to be tenth, after placing third in both Friday and Saturday morning sessions.
The Yamaha problems persisted, and not only for the factory riders.
Maverick Vinales (Movistar Yamaha) did manage to get through from Q1, but could do no better than 11th, ahead of Taka Nakagami (Idemitsu Honda, also through from Q1. (UPDATE: After this story was posted Race Stewards applied a three-position penalty to Vinales and a six-position penalty to repeat offender Franco Morbidelli for riding slowly on the racing line in Q1.)
But with Monster Yamaha rider Johann Zarco 14th, Valentino Rossi (Movistar Yamaha) was mired down in 18th, one place ahead of Monster-Yamaha rookie Syahrin. It was Rossi’s worst qualifying since Assen in 2006, where he was injured from a crash in practice.
2018 Aragon MotoGP Saturday Results
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