Iannone secures home Moto2 pole

Andrea Iannone (Fimmco Speed Up) pleased his home crowd at Mugello by taking pole position for the Moto2 race at the Italian circuit, leading a busy qualifying session. Iannone’s lap of 1’55.598 secured him the fourth pole of his career – his first in the new intermediate category – by a margin of 0.260s.

Joining him on the front row will be Championship leader Toni Elías (Gresini Racing Moto2), who put in a hot final lap of the session to rise to second, having been much further down the timesheet for most of the qualifying, and he experienced a run-off at Turn 1 early on. Alex de Angelis (RSM Team Scot) and Jules Cluzel (Forward Racing) had just five-hundredths of a second separating them in third and fourth as they completed the front row.

Shoya Tomizawa (Technomag-CIP), who is second in the overall standings and 18 points off Elías going into tomorrow, will lead the second row after setting the fifth best time, with Sergio Gadea (Tenerife 40 Pons), Gabor Talmacsi (Fimmco Speed Up) and Axel Pons (Tenerife 40 Pons) also inside the top eight. Talmacsi had a fall towards the end of the session which appeared to cause him no issues.

Thomas Lüthi (Interwetten Moriwaki Racing) and Julián Simón (Mapfre Aspar) also set top-ten times, with the latter sliding out at the very end of the session but returning to his bike immediately. British rider Scot Redding of the Marc VDS Racing team ended the session in 28th place, just under 1.5s off pole.