BEZZECCHI BEATS MARC MARQUEZ TO ARAGON POLE WITH RECORD LAP
Marco Bezzecchi has taken pole position for the Grand Prix of Aragon, beating reigning world champion Marc Marquez by 0.089 seconds. The Aprilia rider stopped the clock at 1:44.962, the first lap under 1:45 in MotorLand’s history. Alex Marquez qualified third and completes the front row.
The lap is more impressive than the time alone suggests. Bezzecchi is still carrying shoulder and knee injuries, and he needed surgery in Italy after crashing in qualifying at the German Grand Prix. He spoke this weekend about how hard a left-turning circuit like MotorLand is on his body. He was still quick enough to beat the one rider who has never been beaten here on a Ducati.
Q2 became a straight fight between the two of them. Marc Marquez opened with a 1:45.136, which was itself a new outright record for the track. Bezzecchi answered with a 1:44.984, then improved by another 0.022 seconds on his next run to set the time that took pole.
Marquez had one more chance at it. He was setting red sectors and had cut the gap to almost nothing at the second split, but a big front-end slide at Turn 14 ended the lap and his challenge. Pedro Acosta had already crashed moments earlier at Turn 8, having taken a tow from Marquez while on a personal best time.
Losing pole matters more than usual here for Marquez. Since joining Ducati he has won the last four races at Aragon, counting both sprints and Grands Prix, and he has seven premier-class wins in front of these fans in total. This is his strongest circuit, and he arrives needing results.
The championship table explains why. Aragon is round 13 of 22, and Jorge Martin leads on points, 31 clear of his own Aprilia team-mate Bezzecchi. Marquez is further back still, 40 points behind Martin after finishing ninth and seventh at Silverstone.
Behind the front row, Raul Fernandez starts fourth for Trackhouse Aprilia, having won the previous round in Britain. Martin lines up fifth and Acosta sixth despite his fall. Fabio Di Giannantonio takes seventh, ahead of Francesco Bagnaia, Johann Zarco and Diogo Moreira, with Fermin Aldeguer and Franco Morbidelli completing the top twelve.
Bagnaia and Moreira reached Q2 the hard way, through Q1. Moreira, a rookie, crashed at Turn 2 in the closing minutes but had already done enough to hold his transfer place. Joan Mir came closest to taking it from him and fell about two tenths short, ending up fifteenth. Jack Miller, whose departure from Pramac Yamaha and from MotoGP was confirmed this week, was the fastest Yamaha in thirteenth.
Two riders are back on the grid this weekend after injury. Zarco is racing for the first time in more than three months, having hurt his knees in a first-corner restart crash in Catalunya, and he reached Q2 directly on Friday. Aldeguer returns after fracturing a vertebra at Assen. Two others are absent: Ai Ogura, hurt while training in Japan and replaced by Lorenzo Savadori, and Maverick Vinales, out for a second event in a row with shoulder problems, with Pol Espargaro standing in at Tech3.
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