French MotoGP: Jorge Martin smashes lap record to claim pole, Marc Marquez P13
Jorge Martin continued his stunning start to the Le Mans MotoGP by claiming pole position despite a late crash.
To kick off Q2, MotoGP series leader Jorge Martin smashed the official lap record on just his first flying lap.
Francesco Bagnaia slotted into second spot but the reigning world champion was nowhere near the time of Martin.
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As Bagnaia improved again, so did Martin as he became the first rider to ever set a sub 1m 30s lap at Le Mans.
Third fastest was Maverick Vinales, one place ahead of team-mate Aleix Espargaro who was over six tenths down on Martin’s time.
At the start of the second and final runs, drama began with Martin crashing at turn three as he looked to flip his Ducati from left to right.
Moments later and world champion Bagnaia suffered a rare crash at turn nine. The Ducati rider was on course to challenge Martin before losing the front-end.
Bagnaia’s GP24 machine then caught fire as marshals rushed to deploy their fire extinguishers.
Aleix Espargaro and Jack Miller also went down before Marco Bezzecchi squeezed himself on the second row with P5.
Marquez out in Q1
Q1 got underway with a star-studded line-up of Marc Marquez, Enea Bastianini and Brad Binder, all of whom needed to advance in order to ‘save’ their weekend.
Following Bastianini, Marc Marquez decided to continue with his first flying lap after the factory Ducati rider made a mistake at turn one.
Marquez came across the line to set a blinding time of 1:30.586s, however, the same could not be said for Binder who returned to pit lane without setting a fast lap.
At the start of the second and final stint, Marquez positioned himself behind Bastianini again before a huge front-end slide saw him abandon his lap.
The ‘save’ of the season, Marquez managed to remain uprgith after losing the front-end through the incredibly fast turn one.
Bastianini then fired in a new all-time lap record before Marquez’ difficult weekend got even worse as Miguel Oliveira joined Bastianini in bettering his time and advancing to Q2.
