Espargaró Takes Surprise British GP Pole For Honda
Grid Talk Reporter 15:43 28/08/2021
Pol Espargaró took his first MotoGP pole position as a Honda rider at Silverstone, albeit his celebrations were delayed by confusion over an illegal lap time by Jorge Martín.
Martín briefly left the MotoGP paddock in stunned silence by recording a 01:58.008, which would’ve been a new lap record had it not been for the fact he cut the Turn 8-9 chicane at Club. But that wasn’t immediately obvious and the lap time stood for a few minutes until it was finally taken off the board soon after the onboard of his corner cut was televised.
Points leader Fabio Quartararo’s very first timed effort in qualifying was the first sub-1m59s lap of the weekend, giving him provisional pole by three tenths over Ducati duo Francesco Bagnaia and Martín. But Espargaró and Bagnaia both narrowly jumped ahead of Quartararo, whose late improvement was not enough to end what has been something of a mini-drought of pole positions. Once Martín’s corner cut was accounted for, Espargaró got to celebrate an important pole, having struggled so far since his off-season switch from KTM.
Martín was relegated to fourth, ahead of Marc Márquez - who had to rebound from having his initial fast time deleted for track limits abuse at Chapel - and Aleix Espargaró, who is Aprilia’s sole rider this weekend following Lorenzo Savadori’s withdrawal. Jack Miller (Ducati), Valentino Rossi (Petronas Yamaha SRT), Johann Zarco (Pramac Ducati) and Álex Rins (Suzuki) completed the top 10, the latter two having made it through Q1. Joan Mir, who very narrowly escaped a crash in the pre-qualifying FP4, was only 11th for Suzuki, while KTM rider Brad Binder was the sole Q2 entrant to be more than a second adrift. Avintia Ducati rookie Enea Bastianini looked in with a good chance of denying either Zarco or Rins a spot in Q2, having taken an early lead, but then fell in the final minutes of the first segment at the Farm corner.
He was demoted to third place and 13th on the starting grid, and will be joined on the fifth row by teammate Luca Marini and LCR Honda’s Takaaki Nakagami, who was left to rue Bastianini’s crash bringing out yellow flags. Factory Yamaha stand-in Cal Crutchlow was 19th, followed by a still-struggling Miguel Oliveira (KTM) and newcomer Jake Dixon (Petronas Yamaha SRT), who did manage what was by far the fastest lap of his weekend so far.
