Jorge Lorenzo beats Pedrosa for pole position at Motorland Aragon

This afternoon’s MotoGP’s qualifying session at Motorland Aragon was fortunately dry, but the asphalt was cold just 16°C and even if the riders didn’t have any dry set-up time they immediately starting pushing and in the opening minutes Dani Pedrosa crashed out at turn 14 and completely trashed his main machine, but when he returned to track with his spare he took just a few laps to regain his confidence and he and Jorge Lorenzo went into rivalry mode in the final minutes for the pole position and it went to the Yamaha rider by just 0.088s over birthday boy Pedrosa, who has a fantastic fourth sector.

Who really put in blistering laps all through the hour long session was Cal Crutchlow as he conquered the final spot on the front row and he was just 0.172s from his Yamaha counterpart and the same tenth gap from Ben Spies who was fourth on the other factory Yamaha.

Stefan Bradl was fifth with Andrea Dovizioso in sixth, while Jonathan Rea put in an impressive performance in his second qualifying session with the Honda RC213V taking seventh (he had qualified 9th at Misano) and was just a dab over one second from the top of the timesheets.

Valentino Rossi lost the front his Ducati at turn 2 as he went off slightly off the line with a new tire halfway through the session, he returned to track and despite lowering his lap times he couldn’t do better than eighth and the usual 1.5s off pace, so it seems that the new parts (chassis and swingarm) that he debuted at Misano to take second, weren’t a breakthrough but was just the result of having tested in the dry two weeks prior to the GP. Team mate Nicky Hayden also crashed, but in the final minute in one of his last flying laps and it put him 9th and opening the third row.

After lingering in lowly 18th and 19th during the practice sessions, a bruised Hector Barbera made a strong jump forward to take 10th and he was just 0.059s from the Ducati factory rider.

CRT rider Aleix Espargaro was 11th and he was just a little more than one tenth slower than the Valentino Rossi in 8th and faster than Alvaro Bautista who ended up 12th.

MotoGP Motorland Aragon Qualifying Results:

01- Jorge Lorenzo – Yamaha Factory Racing – Yamaha YZR M1 – 1’49.404
02- Dani Pedrosa – Repsol Honda Team – Honda RC213V – + 0.088
03- Cal Crutchlow – Monster Yamaha Tech 3 – Yamaha YZR M1 – + 0.172
04- Ben Spies – Yamaha Factory Racing – Yamaha YZR M1 – + 0.344
05- Stefan Bradl – LCR Honda MotoGP – Honda RC213V – + 0.630
06- Andrea Dovizioso – Monster Yamaha Tech 3 – Yamaha YZR M1 – + 0.837
07- Jonathan Rea – Repsol Honda Team – Honda RC213V – + 1.006
08- Valentino Rossi – Ducati Team – Ducati Desmosedici GP12 – + 1.545
09- Nicky Hayden – Ducati Team – Ducati Desmosedici GP12 – + 1.609
10- Hector Barbera – Pramac Racing Team – Ducati Desmosedici GP12 – + 1.668

with Twowheelsblog