Bagnaia Takes Fifth Consecutive MotoGP Pole In Portimao
Calum Gill 15:32 06/11/2021
Ducati's Francesco Bagnaia scored a remarkable fifth consecutive MotoGP pole at Portimao, while champion Fabio Quartararo - who had managed the same feat earlier this season - was only seventh.
Quartararo and Bagnaia had run the show through practice, but it was Jack Miller who uncorked a Portimao record lap early on in the pole shoot-out instead, with neither of the two favourites even in the top three at the halfway mark of the session. Yet Bagnaia jumped narrowly ahead of team-mate Miller with his very first attempt on his second run, and found another tenth of a second with a follow-up effort moments before the chequered flag. Miller improved too, but only by seven thousandths, leaving him to prop up a Ducati 1-2 that would have been a 1-2-3-4 if not for the efforts of Suzuki rider Joan Mir.
Mir beat the closely-matched Pramac Ducati duo of Jorge Martín and Johann Zarco to record his best-ever MotoGP qualifying, although he was seen angrily giving a piece of his mind to Álex Márquez (LCR Honda) - who had passed him into Turn 1 on their last laps - after the chequered flag. Despite being world champion in 2020, Mir had never previously qualified above fourth in MotoGP - though he was elevated to third by a Zarco penalty at last year’s Styrian GP.
Pol Espargaró was the lead Honda rider in sixth, a place that would’ve gone to Quartararo had he not had his fastest lap in the session deleted for a yellow flag infringement - the yellow flags having been caused by a Luca Marini crash at turn 14. Quartararo only lost one place as a consequence, and will be joined by Marquez and team-mate Franco Morbidelli on the third row. Iker Lecuona, who was comfortably the fastest KTM of the quartet in Q1 and advanced to Q2 with Zarco, will lead row four, joined by Álex Rins (Suzuki) and Marini (Sky VR46 Avintia).
Avintia Esponsorama rider (and Marini’s semi-team-mate) Enea Bastianini briefly looked like joining his many Ducati peers in Q2, but was shuffled down to 13th by a late Q1 improvement from Zarco. Aleix Espargaró was a further tenth down in fourth in Q1, as the lead Aprilia rider (four places up on team-mate Maverick Viñales), while Danilo Petrucci was the closest KTM rider to his team-mate Lecuona in Q1, and will complete the fifth row. It was therefore a bruising session for KTM’s factory riders. Home hero Miguel Oliveira was just a couple of hundredths off Petrucci and 16th-placed Valentino Rossi, but was almost half a second down on Lecuona - at a track where Oliveira had won last year.
It was worse still for team-mate Brad Binder, who will line up at the head of row seven and was nearly seven tenths off Lecuona, not helped by an early-Q1 crash at the sharp Turn 3. The only other rider to fall in Q1 was Takaaki Nakagami, with the Japanese LCR Honda rider’s late off at the hairpin-like Turn 5 consigning him to last place on the grid.
