The controversial MotoGP classification was held under a threat of rain. As the thunder rumbled around the Mugello circuit on Saturday afternoon, with Q1 initially starting on wet tires before switching to slicks, the stewards continued to wave rain flags.
There was only one drop in qualifying, when Marc Márquez – who announced on Saturday that Mugello will be his last race for the foreseeable future due to further surgery on his right arm – was caught in those wet patches at the start of Q2, causing a red flag after going down in the second corner and leaving his bike destroyed and on fire.
Finally, the Q2 session was completed on slick tyres, with Fabio Di Giannantonio building on his advantage to claim a surprising first pole position.
Given this situation, Fabio Quartararo considers that the nature of the Mugello circuit should have led the Race Direction to delay the start of qualifying, especially to allow safer conditions.
“This afternoon, I think the conditions were really dangerous,” said the Yamaha rider, who will start on Sunday from sixth position.
“It really wasn’t a good decision to do what we did. It’s not normal to go out on the track, the fastest in history, when you don’t know if you’re going in the rain, if you’re going on the slick, you don’t know what to expect,” he added. “At this track, we can’t wait for something to happen to postpone or wait. So it wasn’t a good decision for me to go out on the track with the conditions we had.”
“On this circuit, which is such a long track, it can be wet there, dry here, and you start here and it’s dry, but you go to turn 8 or turn 9, the corners where you get close to 100km/h or more, You go in super fast and you don’t know the conditions, it’s not a great feeling.”
Aprilia rider Aleix Espargaró, who will start one place behind Quartararo, has also echoed the Frenchman’s comments and added that the fact that the stewards kept showing the rain flags when he had stopped spitting at the end of Q2 caused confusion.
“The classification was very dangerous, extremely dangerous,” said Espargaró. “For me it was a red flag. We put out a red flag for security reasons, right? Today it was a red flag.”
“You have no idea what’s going to happen. And then in the second part of qualifying it hardly rained anywhere, it was pretty dry, that’s why the lap times were so fast.
