The intermediate class seemed to get the best conditions of the weekend, with track temperature generously going over the 20 degrees mark, although clouds intermittently came out to play. The confidence boost given by the weather didn’t seem to help the Moto2 grid, with quite a few crashes across the two qualifying sessions. Jorge Martin was a familiar face at the helm of Q2 early on, but the Spaniard sealed his fate with a crash at turn three and the yellow flags barely got a chance to come out by the time Jorge Navarro followed his example, keeping the marshals on their toes. The mishap allowed Sam Lowes to grab top spot but the attacks kept coming and in the end it was Joe Roberts who secured an excellent third pole position of the season by eight hundredths of a second.

Despite missing out on pole, another solid performance from Lowes sees him start from the middle of the front row, ahead of Remy Gardner. Martin’s early benchmark ensured him fourth on the grid even though he missed the final third of the session and the KTM man will be joined by SKY Racing duo Marco Bezzecchi and Luca Marini. The championship leader put his turn 5 nightmare behind him and climbed as high as second before getting pushed back to sixth late on.

Xavi Vierge opens row three ahead of Jake Dixon and Enea Bastianini, the Italian clearly the fastest man in Q1 but only ninth fastest the second time out. Also escaping Q1 were Tom Luthi, Aron Canet and Fabio Di Giannantonio, with admirable performances given their circumstances. Di Giannantonio might have needed crutches to get to his machine but still qualified 11th, sharing fourth row with Canet, who is recovering from arm pump surgery, while Luthi crashed at turn 7 late in Q1 but was lucky to be able to bring his bike back in time for Q2 and qualify 14th.

Results: