Moto3: Masia takes second pole of 2021

The 15th round of the 2021 Moto3 World Championship takes place this weekend, at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, for the Grand Prix of the Americas. Ahead of qualifying, Jaume Masia was the fastest rider in the combined free practice times, as he looks to go one better this weekend than in 2019, when he was runner-up to Aron Canet.

Q1 started badly for Lorenzo Fellon, as he fell off his SIC58 Squadra Corse Honda early on. The Frenchman recovered, though, and finished the session at the top of the times, and thus headed through to Q2. 

Another early crasher in Q1 was Carlos Tatay, who was back out on track, courtesy of some speedy work by the Esponsorama Avintia team, with a few seconds to spare – enough time to get round and start a last flying lap. Tatay’s lap was enough for fourth, but only briefly as he was immediately bettered by Alberto Surra who, along with the Petronas Sprinta Racing duo of Darryn Binder and John McPhee, joined Fellon in advancing to Q2.

Dennis Foggia had been strong all weekend, able to put in lap times on his own and with decent consistency. He topped Q2 for most of the session, while Masia, who topped free practice, was 18th. In the final run, though, Masia found time in the final sector and took pole position with a time which went without response from Foggia, who was realistically the only challenger to Masia’s time. 

It was Masia’s first pole position since round two in Doha, and the Spaniard is riding probably the best he has all season, with the possible exception of his win in Qatar, in Austin this weekend.

Despite missing pole position, Foggia is in an almost perfect position to decrease his championship points deficit. The Italian currently sits 42 points behind championship leader Pedro Acosta, but has won the last two races, while Acosta has not found the podium since his win in Austria back in August.

Completing the front row tomorrow will be Jeremy Alcoba, who has at least rediscovered his qualifying form from earlier in the year. Whether the #52 can translate the positive Saturday into a good result on Sunday remains to be seen. Third place made Alcoba the top-placed rider in qualifying who had not been to COTA before this weekend.

Izan Guevara was the top rookie in fourth, and another rider who had not visited the Circuit of the Americas before this weekend. Alongside him on the grid tomorrow will be Xavi Artigas, who had arguably the save of the season in FP2 on Friday afternoon, while Tatsuki Suzuki will start sixth.

Filip Salac topped FP2 on Friday afternoon, but could only manage seventh in Q2, from where he will be joined by Andrea Migno and Deniz Oncu on the third row; while John McPhee will head up row four from Romano Fenati and Stefano Nepa. 

Niccolo Antonelli seems to have some momentum behind a move for him to Moto2 to replace the (unconfirmed) MotoGP-bound Marco Bezzecchi, but his qualifying performance left much to be desired, and the #23 will start 13th, ahead of Ayumu Sasaki and Pedro Acosta, who will have a lot of work to do from 15th tomorrow. 

Lorenzo Fellon was unable to carry much momentum from his time-topping Q1 into Q2, and will start 16th, alongside Darryn Binder and Alberto Surra on row six.

It was tough luck for Tatay, who is rumoured to be on his way to PruestelGP next year to ride their CFMoto (not a new manufacturer, but another KTM subsidiary, this time from China) machines. The Spaniard will start from 19th tomorrow – despite his and his team’s strong efforts – alongside Riccardo Rossi, who blew out the final sector on his final lap, which cost him his spot in Q2. Completing row seven tomorrow will be Maximilian Kofler.

Adrian Fernandez will head up row eight, alongside Ryusei Yamanaka and Yuki Kunii; while Andi Izdiihar and Kaito Toba will start 25th and 26th, respectively, in what is a fairly diminished Moto3 grid this weekend in Texas.

One absentee is Sergio Garcia, whose championship challenge is probably now over having sustained a kidney haematoma in an FP1 crash on Friday, which was enough for the medical team to declare him unfit for this weekend.