Less than 48 hours after announcing his MotoGP retirement, Aleix Espargaro is on pole position at his home GP in Barcelona. The Aprilia star overtakes Francesco Bagnaia in qualifying at the last second. Brad Binder completes the first row. Jorge Martin is only in P6 after a fall. Qualifying is even worse for Marc Marquez: he fails in Q1 and has to make do with 14th place on the grid.
This is how Q1 went in Barcelona: The Marquez brothers start qualifying in formation. Alex drives ahead, Marc follows him. Marc takes the lead, Alex moves into second place. However, Alex is then pushed out by Fabio Quartararo and Marc has to hand over the lead to Raul Fernandez. The first run ends with the order Raul Fernandez, Marc Marquez, Quartararo, and Alex Marquez.
Even after the pit stop, Alex Marquez takes over the lead for Gresini team-mate Marc. However, there is no improvement for the time being, while Raul Fernandez is able to significantly beat his best time. Miguel Oliveira also improves and moves up to P2. In his last attempt, Marc Marquez fights his way back to second place, but Fabio Di Giannantonio has the last word in this session. He races to the front in the final seconds and moves up to Q2 together with Raul Fernandez.
Third place goes to Alex Marquez, who is able to catch up with his brother Marc. The Marquez family is therefore on starting positions 13 and 14, with Oliveira next to them. Row six is made up of Marco Bezzecchi, Quartararo and Johann Zarco, who suffered his second crash on Saturday morning at the end of the session. Starting positions 19 and 21 go to Augusto Fernandez, Takaaki Nakagami and Joan Mir. Luca Marini and wildcard man Stefan Bradl are on the last row.
This was Q2 of the Catalonia GP: Jorge Martin sets the first benchmark in Q2, but on the second lap he is displaced first by Pedro Acosta and then by Francesco Bagnaia. Bagnaia comes to the pit stop as provisional pole sitter ahead of Acosta, Martin and Aleix Espargaro.
The final showdown begins with a leap forward for Brad Binder – he is now second. Immediately afterwards, Pramac team-mates Martin and Franco Morbidelli fly off independently of each other in Turn 2 within a few seconds. Qualifying is therefore over early for both drivers.
After the yellow flags have disappeared, it is Aleix Espargaro who takes second place, 0.024 seconds behind Bagnaia. On the very last lap, Espargaro overtakes Bagnaia by 31 thousandths of a second and grabs pole position at his home race. Alongside him on the first row are Bagnaia and Binder. Row two is made up of Acosta, Di Giannantonio and Martin. Starting positions seven to nine go to Raul Fernandez, Alex Rins and Jack Miller. Row four is Franco Morbidelli, Enea Bastianini and Maverick Vinales.
The weather: Good conditions prevailed in the MotoGP qualifying in Barcelona. In sunshine, the outside temperature was 20 degrees, and the asphalt reached 23 degrees.