2013 Mugello MotoGP QP Result: The Pole Proves Slippery

By Mike Lewis | Sat, 01/06/2013 - 12:27

Results and summary of MotoGP qualifying

Championship points leader Dani Pedrosa grabbed pole position from Jorge Lorenzo on his final lap of QP2 and set a new Mugello qualifying record in the process with a time of 1'47.157.  Lorenzo, who held the pole record for all of five minutes, ended up a shocked second. But the real surprise of the session was Andrea Dovizioso who put Ducati on the front row for the second race in a row.

But the final results don't reveal the drama of the final few minutes of the session. Late in the session, Marc Marquez set his fastest lap of the day by a wide margin and held second to Lorenzo. Rossi then set his fastest lap and looked like a safe third. Nickey Hayden followed Rossi and pushed The Doctor into fourth. Cal Crutchlow had crashed with eight minutes left and looked likely for a fourth-row start as it took an agonizing amount of time for him to find his way back to the pits.  Bradl pushed Rossi lower still. Dovisioso followed Pedrosa around to climb into third. Crutchlow appeared late on the track on his backup bike and put it -- briefly -- on the front row.

And it still wasn't over. Pedrosa saved his best for last when he ripped a final lap that took seven-hundreths from what appeared minutes earlier to be a safe pole for Lorenzo. In the end, Mugello's partisan Rossi crowd sat in stunned silence as their hero plunged from third to seventh on the grid in about three minutes. And Marquez, who seemingly pulled off a miracle to climb into second -- the result of a lap in which he followed Rossi -- was relegated late into sixth.

Results:

Pos No. Rider Bike Time Diff Diff Previous
1 26 Dani Pedrosa Honda 1'47.157    
2 99 Jorge Lorenzo Yamaha 1'47.226 0.069 0.069
3 4 Andrea Dovizioso Ducati 1'47.628 0.471 0.402
4 35 Cal Crutchlow Yamaha 1'47.632 0.475 0.004
5 6 Stefan Bradl Honda 1'47.737 0.580 0.105
6 93 Marc Marquez Honda 1'47.763 0.606 0.026
7 46 Valentino Rossi Yamaha 1'47.872 0.715 0.109
8 69 Nicky Hayden Ducati 1'48.006 0.849 0.134
9 19 Alvaro Bautista Honda 1'48.355 1.198 0.349
10 51 Michele Pirro Ducati 1'48.564 1.407 0.209
11 38 Bradley Smith Yamaha 1'48.706 1.549 0.142
12 41 Aleix Espargaro Aprilia ART 1'48.765 1.608 0.059
From Q1
13 29 Andrea Iannone Ducati 1'49.265 0.741 0.405
14 14 Randy de Puniet Aprilia ART 1'49.266 0.742 0.001
15 8 Hector Barbera FTR Kawasaki 1'49.847 1.323 0.581
16 9 Danilo Petrucci Suter BMW 1'50.518 1.994 0.671
17 5 Colin Edwards FTR Kawasaki 1'50.701 2.177 0.183
18 71 Claudio Corti FTR Kawasaki 1'50.729 2.205 0.028
19 70 Michael Laverty PBM 1'50.787 2.263 0.058
20 17 Karel Abraham Aprilia ART 1'51.089 2.565 0.302
21 68 Yonny Hernandez Aprilia ART 1'51.239 2.715 0.150
22 67 Bryan Staring FTR Honda 1'51.981 3.457 0.742
23 7 Hiroshi Aoyama FTR Kawasaki 1'52.148 3.624 0.167
24 52 Lukas Pesek Suter BMW 1'52.345 3.821 0.197
NOT QUALIFIED
  11 Ben Spies Ducati      

 

2013
5
MotoGP
Mugello, Italy
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Comments

That was the first qualifying session I've watched end to end, and it was awesome. Maybe more interesting to watch than the race sadly.

Everybody bunched up pushing hard on low fuel, randomly distributed with fast guys in the middle of the pack slicing their way through to get a clear lap, slower guys catching a tow and shaking things up, setting times way further up the leader board than they have any right to, and to top it off Dani coming from nowhere to blow everybody's doors off on the last lap!

Wonderful.

You could be right but it could be a titanic race. Clearly Lorenzo has great race pace, maybe Rossi too. And whatever went down in practice I've learnt to never rule Pedrosa out on race day, this part of his career anyway. At least I think the two Spaniards should be close if dry. If wet hmmm dunno.

These two are the only ones that seem to be able to pull low 48's at will. Rossi is is close. avg about .3-.4 off that. On race day, if he can get a good start and tag on to the lead group, he will probably come good in the latter half of the race.

If it's dry, Pedrosa for the win. He's going into San Donato first, it's just a question of how soon will Lorenzo attack.

Agree, Rossi is nowhere near the top two.
Look at the FP3 and FP4times. He has a few tenths on Calvin and the Killer Bees (Bradl, Bautista) and Dovi, but is about 1/2 second down on the two Spaniards.

Come race day, I expect the Golden One (latest edition) to challenge for the third podium step. (Does anyone else think MM needs to find a big Santa beard to cover that awful bandage?)

Is anybody else as annoyed as I am with the TV director's insistance on cutting away from the bikes on track to show guys in pitlane?

The guy really out did himself in today's coverage. I think if you added up the minutes wasted we might have missed about a third of each 15 minute session while the director was showing us nothing of interest happening in the garages.

It must stop now! PLEASE!!!

What a QP. Holy smokes. Happy for Dovi but its is alas a wasted grid position as be will be forced back by mid-race through no fault of his own.

Crutchlow owes me a new ipad after he made me throw it three times - once for crashing, once for knocking VR out of 3rd and once for losing his front row grid. Conflicting loyalties!

Pedrosa turning wheels in anger!

should REALLY get rossi's bike! Dovi really should get rossi's bike. politics always gets in the way of my fantasies!

dani is WAY more deserving of respect than he has typically got. that was again politics getting in the way of his pure talent!

The launch off the line is probably uppermost in many minds tonight given the grid. Clearly as ever the Ducati's tyre consumption if its dry will hamper Dovizioso,but should he blitz the Honda and Yamaha into turn one,its game on for a tight race. The Rossi of old would have laughed off a 3rd row start and slalomed his way to the front by the 3rd lap. That is not the case anymore.

Last year's front row at Mugello was:

Honda - Yamaha - Ducati

The only thing different about this year is the identity of the front rower for Ducati. Last year it was Hector Barbera on the Pramac machine. His qualifying time: 1m 47.545s, a fraction better than Dovi this year.

However, last year the second row was headed by a Ducati - Nicky Hayden with a 1m 47.671s effort compared with 1m 48.006s this year. The rest of last year's second row was the Honda of Casey Stoner - 1m 47.689s - and the Yamaha of Cal Crutchlow - 1m 47.749s.

Row three last year was the Yamaha of Dovizioso: 1m 47.751s; the Honda of Stefan Bradl, 1m 47.851s and the Yamaha of Ben Spies, 1m 48.149s.

Row four in 2012: Valentino Rossi, (Ducati) 1m 48.502s; Alvaro Bautista (Honda), 1m 48.894s and Aleix Espargaro (ART), 1m 49.387s.

What was different last year was how tight the top nine were, just 0.865s covered them compared with 1.198s this year.

Pedrosa, Lorenzo, Crutchlow, Dovizioso, Bradl, Rossi, Bautista and Espargaro have all gone faster this year, Rossi, Espargaro and Bautista significantly so, by six tenths of a second in the case of Rossi and Espargaro and half a second in Bautista's.

Hayden and Barbera were slower this year than last, in Nicky's case by 0.335s. However, the jump from a satellite Ducati to a Kawasaki-engined FTR-framed bike has seen Barbera's qualifying time blow out by a massive 2.3 seconds.

Last year Mugello was bathed in sunshine all weekend so it is a great credit to all the riders who went faster this year when you consider that rain pretty much washed out the first session and also affected the second.

The weather forecast indicates a chance of a skiff of rain in the afternoon. Let us hope not.