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| Laurent Fellon and Johann Zarco with shoutout |
Freshly crowned Moto2 champion Johann Zarco takes his seventh pole of the season ahead of Thomas Luthi and Jonas Folger.
Ajo Motorsport’s Zarco set the fastest ever lap by a Moto2 bike
around the Twin Ring Motegi, a 1’50.339, shaving over half a second off
Tito Rabat’s 2014 Pole Record (1’50.854). The Frenchman managed to set
this time despite cooler conditions on Saturday afternoon (Track temp.
23˚C) to finish 0.171s ahead of Derendinger Racing Interwetten Thomas
Luthi. It was Luthi’s first front row start since Argentina.
AGR Team’s Jonas Folger (+0.577s) was a further 0.406s back from
Luthi as he completed the front row in his best Qualifying performance
since the Catalan GP. Speed Up Racing’s Sam Lowes (+0.614s) heads up the
second row in fourth. The British rider managed to set the exact same
time as Paginas Amarillas HP40’s Alex Rins (5th), but starts ahead of
the Spaniard due to his next best lap. Rins missed out on the front row
for the first time in six races.
Petronas Raceline Malaysia Hafizh Syahrin equalled his best
Qualifying performance of the season and will start from the back of the
second row in sixth, but was 0.947s off the pace of Zarco.
Idemitsu Honda Team Asia Takaaki Nakagami will start from seventh at
his home grand prix ahead of Axel Pons (AGR Team), Sandro Cortese
(Dynavolt Intact GP) and Lorenzo Baldassarri (Forward Racing) who completed the top ten.
Reigning Moto2™ World Champion Tito Rabat is sitting out the rest of the weekend after being declared unfit at the end of FP1 with his broken left radius, hence why Zarco was crowned champion on Friday.