Dani Pedrosa leads at Mugello and takes the MotoGP pole

Rider Dani Pedrosa has taken the MotoGP World Championship pole position at the Mugello Circuit, after an intense battle between the Spanish riders Héctor Barberá and Jorge Lorenzo. In the end, it was the 26 who made the best use of those soft tyres and set a time of 1.47.284, earning his second pole of the season.

It was a very hotly contested pole position battle, with 5-6 riders within less than half a second, so this fight for the front positions was extremely tight, and the Spanish riders made history, since for the first time in the history of the MotoGP World Championship we have three riders on the front row of the grid.

Although the end was a little strange for Jorge Lorenzo, when the 99 was pushing to the limit on the last lap and went into the pits on red, we don’t really know the reason. In principle, the pit crew said it was a MotoGP problem, specifically an electronic issue that affected him at the last moment of the lap and stopped the bike.

Despite this problem, Lorenzo managed to hold on to second place, 0.139s behind Pedrosa, while behind them was a surprising Héctor Barberá, who amazed everyone with his solo lap time on the Ducati that has caused so many problems for the rest of the Italian marque’s riders, so a great day for the 8.

The top 5 was completed by Nicky Hayden in 4th and Casey Stoner in 5th. Today the Australian did not look like himself on the Italian track, closing qualifying 0.405s behind his teammate. Further back we had Cal Crutchlow 6th, Andrea Dovizioso 7th, Stefan Bradl 8th, Ben Spies 9th and Valentino Rossi 10th. Rossi’s position is certainly surprising, at home, on his own circuit and with Barberá 3rd and Hayden 4th… it is difficult.

The best CRT in this pole position was Aleix Espargaró, who continues to impress, finishing ahead of his teammate Randy, while the positions of the other Spanish riders were 11th for Bautista and 18th for Silva.

As for crashes, we had several, including Bautista, who is having a horrible weekend, Ben Spies and Cal Crutchlow, fortunately without physical consequences for them.

We have a lot of excitement to come tomorrow with Lorenzo and his blistering pace, a Pedrosa who is coming in at 100% after Germany, a surprise Barberá and a Stoner who always gives it full throttle.