FIFTH ROW FOR ESPARGARÓ AND EIGHTH FOR IANNONE
On the second race weekend of the 2019 MotoGP season, Aleix Espargaró just barely missed out on going through to Q2, finishing third by just 71 thousandths in Q1, which places him in the best spot on the fifth row with the overall thirteenth place time of 1’39.288.
Aleix demonstrated that the second qualifying session was within his grasp but, just as he was on his good lap, he had to slow down in the finale because of a slower rider on his line. In any case, the extremely small gap behind second place is a testament to the good potential of Aleix and his RS-GP.
From the morning session, after making a few changes to his bike, Andrea Iannone was unable to find the good sensations that had led him to finishing the day yesterday ahead of his teammate. Not even going back to Friday’s settings in view of the decisive session gave Iannone the bike from the first day and the Italian lapped at 1’40.118, stopping at the eighth row of the starting grid for tomorrow. He and his team will now need to analyse the data to understand what happened.