Pecco Bagnaia has not been able to prevent the title of Fabio Quartararo, but if there is something that cannot be denied to the Italian, it is that he is being the king of poles in the last phase of the 2021 MotoGP season. True to its performance on a lap, Bagnaia has achieved the best time in Q2 of the Algarve GP and will start in first position on the grid. Australian Jack Miller was second, closing a Ducati double that could well have been a poker game were it not for Joan Mir. Thanks to his performance with the Suzuki GSX-RR, the Mallorcan rider finished third.
Q1 started with falls almost followed by Brad Binder and Takaaki Nakagami, thus reducing the list of candidates to occupy the first two positions. In fact, the battle to get the two tickets for Q2 became a 100% Ducati question. With a time of 1: 39.130, Johann Zarco took the first position after beating Iker Lecuona by 41 thousandths. For his part, Enea Bastianini was third after giving up one tenth with the two protagonists of the session. Aleix Espargaró finished Q1 in fourth position, while Danilo Petrucci was fifth placed and will close the fifth row of the grid.
In Q2 the Ducati drivers were even more protagonists. Jack Miller started the session with a 1: 38.836 which was already a track record. However, this time remained in borage water as the minutes passed. Not even the fall of Luca Marini and the normal yellow flag that was given by this incident stopped the push of the usual ‘suspects’. By then Pecco Bagnaia already savored a new pole with a 1: 38.725 that nobody could match. In fact, Jack Miller managed to lower his first lap a few thousandths to finish within a tenth of his teammate.
Faced with the push of the Ducati riders, with a double from Bagnaia and Miller, the Spanish Joan Mir has had to settle for the third position. All in all, the Suzuki rider has broken Ducati’s hegemony in some way, since Jorge Martín was fourth and Johann Zarco fifth, which would have drawn a poker for Borgo Panigale’s signature. However, the Pramac pilots will start in the second row with Pol Espargaró. Champion Fabio Quartararo finished seventh ahead of Álex Márquez and Franco Morbidelli, while the fourth row has gone to Iker Lecuona, Álex Rins and Luca Marini.