Pramac Ducati’s Jorge Martin produced a blistering pace to achieve a record-breaking lap time at Le Mans as he seized pole position for MotoGP’s French Grand Prix.
Martin managed to lower the benchmark to 1:29.919s to claim another pole over Francesco Bagnaia, despite the championship leader going down at Turn 4 late on.
The Le Mans circuit proved to be a challenging one for the competitors to master as the session witnessed multiple riders pushing over the limit in the pursuit of pace.
Bagnaia managed to maintain pace with Martin and will line up second, but the Italian also crashed at Turn 9 in his attempts to come within two-tenths of the best time.
Aprilia sustained another productive session, with Maverick Vinales clinching a place on the front row, with Aleix Espargaro back in sixth after he also suffered a shunt.
The VR46 riders carried their momentum from Jerez as both Marco Bezzecchi and Fabio Di Giannantonio qualified in the top five to secure second-row starting places.
Pedro Acosta rebounded from a muted final practice outing to wind up seventh overall, seven-tenths from the top. Fabio Quartararo accompanied the rookie in eighth.
Behind them came Franco Morbidelli’s sister Pramac in ninth, marking another top-10 result in qualifying for the Italian, who seems to be getting to grips with a Ducati.
Enea Bastianini managed to survive a Q1 elimination but he didn’t advance past 10th place, with Jack Miller’s KTM and Miguel Oliveira completing the Q2 competitors.
The big surprise came down at Gresini Ducati as Marc Marquez failed to even reach Q2, with the Spaniard losing the front of his bike at Turn 2 and catching a moment.
Gresini team-mate Alex Marquez also failed to progress, with Trackhouse’s Raul Fernandez, LCR Honda’s Johann Zarco and Yamaha’s Alex Rins splitting the brothers.
Zarco was the sole Honda rider to breach the 1:30s barrier, with Joan Mir on the Japanese marque’s factory bike three places and near three-tenths back in 18th place.
Takaaki Nakagami classified next on the other LCR bike, with GasGas KTM’s Augusto Fernandez struggling to 20th as he was unable to match rookie team-mate Acosta.
Luca Marini endured another challenging showing on the Honda, but he at least avoided the embarrassment of being last as KTM’s Brad Binder clocked the slowest time.
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