With high air and asphalt temperatures and many riders within one second of one another; in the Moto2 qualifiers there were race-like battles with Sam Lowes coming out on top, riding his bike to the limit of 1’51”965, a time that had second place Nakagami just 47 thousandths behind him and Baldassarri at 123 thousandths.
For Lowes this is the third pole position of the season, the sixth in his Moto2 career, a good sign for the race tomorrow where Sam will be trying to do a repeat of Spain, where he ran away with the race, pulling ahead of the rest from the beginning.
Starting from the second spot will be Japanese rider Nakagami, very fast here at Mugello since Friday, both on his flying lap and in terms of race pace. A brilliant third place time goes to Lorenzo Baldassarri, the number 7 rider who rounds out the front row with a gap behind the Brit that was truly minimal and Lorenzo showed excellent, fast and clean lines on the Tuscan uphills and downhills.
The second row is made up of Axel Pons, Marcel Schrotter and Johann Zarco, all within a trifle of one another; another Italian is Simone Corsi with the eighth place time, after a crash that was harmless, but which snuffed out any dreams he had of the front row.
Another rider who crashed on his flying lap was Alex Rins, forced to start from the ninth spot on the grid, just a shout ahead of Luca Marini in tenth. Franco Morbidelli took the thirteenth best time, Pasini the twenty-second and Swiss rider Raffin closes out the time sheets in thirty-first place.
Considering the tight gaps in the top 20 spots, with less than a second behind the best lap, it looks like the race tomorrow at 12:20 will be another battle.