QUALIFYING
Maverick Viñales arrived at Super Saturday with the confidence of a strong opening day in Aragón, after the Spaniard took 3rd of the timesheets in Practice, placing him amongst the favorites for a front row start. Track conditions were once again hot ahead of Free Practice 2 kicking off the day, at the end of which we saw ‘Top Gun’ take the 4th time before heading to Q2. The fight for the pole was once again a tough one with Marc Marquez taking once again the pole position with an insane new all-time lap record in 1’45.704. Maverick’s best of his first run was a 1’46.837 after the Spaniard opted to exit the pit box with a fresh set tire. In his second run, he kept his front tyre but changed the back, which allowed him to gain a little bit more to progress to a 1’46.434 in his last flying lap. Maverick will start from 8th on the grid as he will share the third row with Firmin Aldeguer and Fabio Quartararo. After the small improvements of Friday, Enea Bastianini was looking forward to a new day, but qualifying turned out to be a bit tricky. At the start of Q1, Maverick’s best lap was a 1'47.538 which had him provisionally in the top 5, and then he could later gain a few more to 1’47.453. However, others improved much more, and we saw ‘Bestia’ drop to 7th, meaning he will start both sprint and main event from 17th on the grid, between Miguel Oliveira and wild card Augusto Fernandez.

TISSOT SPRINT
The MotoGP™ class was then ready for the first race of the weekend, with Maverick Viñales and Enea Bastianini lining up in 8th and 17th on the grid for the 15:00 LT start. Lights out! An elbow-to-elbow start between Marc Marquez and Pedro Acosta caused a bit of traffic heading to turn 1, with Viñales forced to brake earlier to find a space. That was P8 after T1-T2 with all riders really close, and eventually the number 12 was in 9th after the opening lap, behind Francesco Bagnaia who had dropped from 4th on the starting grid. In the next lap, a crash behind allowed Brad Binder to find himself right behind Viñales. After two laps, the Red Bull KTM Tech3 rider was just 0.080 seconds off Bagnaia, and sooner than later he made the right move on the two-time MotoGP™ world champion, smoothly sliding on the inside of the 63. That gave Viñales a bit more space to breathe, and he progressively settled into a solid race that allowed him to close the gap on Di Giannantonio in 8th ahead. On lap 6, we saw Fabio Quartararo drop from 6th to 7th, meaning he was now the target of our number 12. Maverick’s confidence saw him take on the Frenchman at the hard-braking of T1 on the opening of lap 7 as both showed us a great battle for 7th, but both protagonists went a bit wide, with Binder following too. Positions remained the same, but the gap to Di Giannantonio grew. There was 1.3 seconds to the 49 with just 4 laps to go, with Binder still maintaining the pressure on teammate Viñales. ‘Top Gun’ showcased excellent pace in the final laps, as he clocked in an excellent 1'47.196 (3rd fastest lap of the day), to continue getting closer to the VR46 rider. Not enough laps for today for Maverick Viñales who settled with P7 and 3 points, but we are confident that ‘Top Gun’ has more in store for the long distance on Sunday! Enea Bastianini took a solid start, powering from 17th to 14th in one lap behind Raul Fernandez, and then he was up to 12th with the Mir-Miller incident on lap 2. However, the Italian’s early pace was not quite enough to close the door on an on-fire Marco Bezzecchi already back to 13th after two laps from the back of the grid. Bezzecchi overtook Bastianini, who settled with P13 for a while. 4 laps remained, and Bastia had progressively closed the gap on Bagnaia in struggles, but unfortunately from lap 9, Enea made a few mistakes which saw him drop to 17th at the checkered flag. The start was good, so let's build on that heading to Sunday's main event, with lights going out at 14:00 (UTC+2) for 23 laps.