MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

If there was little room for surprises in the other qualifying sessions of the day, the intermediate class at least decided to spice things up for the final couple of minutes of Q2. After giving Barry Baltus false hopes at a maiden pole, Manuel Gonzalez picked up the pace in the closing stages to claim a second career pole position in the final minute of the action. Having escaped from Q1 by the skin of his teeth and then spending most of Q2 at the bottom of the ranking, Celestino Vietti put in an excellent final couple of laps to climb straight into second place on the grid, only three hundredths of a second slower than the poleman. Meanwhile, Aron Canet was a bit more consistent on route to the final place on the front row. 

A late charge from Senna Agius also helped the Australian secure 4^th position, sharing the second row of the grid with Baltus, who got demoted to 5^th, and Q1 leader Darryn Binder. Marcos Ramirez, Jake Dixon and Alonso Lopez make up row three – the trio around four tenths of a second behind the leader – while Diogo Moreira completed the top 10. Izan Guevara and Deniz Öncü will be joining the Brazilian on row four, with Albert Arenas, Mario Aji and Dani Holgado on row five – the rookie easily escaping Q1. Fellow rookie Adrian Huertas also joined him in Q2, but had to settle for 18^th grid position, behind Filip Salac and Jorge Navarro, while Ivan Ortola missed out on Q2 by seven hundredths of a second. 

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