MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

Some heavy drizzle threw a spanner in the works for Moto3 qualifying but nothing could derail Matteo Bertelle’s quest for pole. Not even Q1 – which he aced from the first outing and then relaxed in his garage – and definitely none of his rivals, who were faced with a half-second gap at times. Despite the tricky conditions, the Italian posted some very convincing lap times in both sessions and confidently secured back to back pole positions. Angel Piqueras gave it a good go at challenging the leader but only managed to reduce the deficit to two tenths of a second and settled for second, while Ryusei Yamanaka stole the final spot on the front row on his final flying lap. The Japanese rider returns to the first row for the first time since 2022, at the detriment of David Almansa, who got pushed down to 4^th.

The Spaniard will be joined on the second row by compatriot Alvaro Carpe, the rookie putting in another fine performance to claim 5^th place, ahead of teammate and championship leader Jose Antonio Rueda. Riccardo Rossi faded to 7^th place after crashing out in the final couple of minutes of Q2 and taking an unlucky Scott Ogden with him. Joel Kelso tried to mitigate for his double long lap penalty in tomorrow’s race with a solid qualifying performance and managed to climb into a modest 8^th, just ahead of home hero Valentin Perrone who secured a fairly impressive 9^th. 

Joel Esteban did a great job on replacement duty, qualifying 10^th, ahead of Dennis Foggia and Adrian Fernandez, while fellow replacement rider Adrian Cruces also impressed by escaping Q1 and climbing into 13^th grid position. Taiyo Furusato snuck out of Q1 at the last second and took 14^th place on the grid, in between Cruces and Stefano Nepa on the fifth row. Ogden had to make do with 16^th position after the incident and will be joined by Nicola Carraro and Q1 graduate Marcos Uriarte on row six. 

Ruche Moodley missed out on Q2 by one thousandth of a second, sharing row seven with Cormac Buchanan and David Muñoz - who had no real horse in this race, given his pitlane start penalty, but still found a way to make waves after a close exchange with Cruces in the closing stages of Q1. Luca Lunetta will inherit his spot on the grid but it will be little consolation for the unlucky Italian, who managed to lose a piece of his seat unit on his first exit in Q1 and by the time he visited pitlane to resolve the issue, the drizzle had intensified and he had to admit defeat after a couple of hairy moments on track. 

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