According to what Motorsport.com has learned, the meeting, in which the sports managers of Dorna , the promoter of the event, were present, took place first thing in the morning. In it, the representatives of the teams offered their points of view, and finally decided to maintain the agenda of the day originally planned.
The proposed alternative consisted of taking advantage of the time window that, according to weather forecasts, would make it more feasible to hold the official sessions (Q1 and Q2) that should configure the starting grid for this Sunday’s Grand Prix.
Pol Espargaró, Repsol Honda Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
However, after the refusal of the structures, the planned plan remains unchanged, that is, with the start of the first timed sieve scheduled for 3:05 p.m. local time, and with the start of the second (Q2) at 3:30 p.m. In the event that Typhoon Talas, as this storm that is hitting the Tokyo area and its surroundings these days is called, makes it unfeasible for motorcycles to circulate safely, two possible scenarios are proposed, for which there are precedents . In the first of them, the qualifying would take place on Sunday morning, before the test, whose start is set for 3:00 p.m. local time. That solution was already adopted at the 2019 Australian Grand Prix, also as a result of bad weather at Phillip Island. In the second, the grid would be formed based on the times of the day on Friday, in which only one hour and a quarter of training was carried out, given that the state of the asphalt in the second free practice was going to prevent, in any case, lowering those records.
In this scenario, Jack Miller would start from pole position, with the three main candidates for the title placed in second place (Pecco Bagnaia), third (Fabio Quartararo) and fourth (Aleix Espargaró). Marc Márquez, for his part, would start sixth, closing the second row of the grid.
