Simón seals pole in Japan

Julián Simón’s second pole of the 2010 season came at Motegi on Saturday as the Mapfre Aspar rider’s best lap of 1’53.008 placed him at the top of the starting grid for the Moto2 Grand Prix of Japan. Simón has finished second for the last three consecutive races, the first of which was at Indianapolis and which was the site of his last pole position.

In second position (+0.284s) and celebrating having signed a new two-year deal with the Marc VDS Racing Team this week Scott Redding will start from the front row for the fourth successive race, thus continuing his rich vein of form. Yuki Takahashi put his Tech 3 machine there as well with an effort that was a further 0.147s back, and Championship leader Toni Elías (Gresini Racing) took the final front-row spot with a final lap that left him three-thousandths of a second in front of Claudio Corti.

The Italian of the Forward Racing team heads up a second row that also consists of Alex de Angelis (JiR Moto2), Karel Abraham (Cardion AB Motoracing) and Stefan Bradl (Viessmann Kiefer Racing).

Yonny Hernández (Blusens-STX) finished in ninth position, with Andrea Iannone (Fimmco Speed Up) tenth and rounding off the session with a minor run off. Thomas Lüthi (Interwetten Moriwaki), who is contesting second spot in the overall standings with Iannone and Simón, qualified in 16th place.

There were crashes in the session for Héctor Faubel (Marc VDS Racing Team), who qualified 24th, and Shogo Moriwaki, who finished in 27th place.

The Moto2 race is scheduled to start at 1.15pm local time on Sunday.