The Red Bull KTM Ajo Moto2 rider will start on the third row of the grid, from seventh place, with Brad Binder 17th after a crash whilst fighting for the pole.

The starting grid for the Moto2 race at the German GP was contested today at Sachsenring. Brad Binder and Jorge Martin went straight into Q2 after finishing first and seventh, respectively, in FP3. In the 15 minute qualifying session later in the day, the Spaniard got his best grid position of the year so far and tomorrow he will begin the race on the third row. Meanwhile, his teammate is 17th on the grid, after an unfortunate crash which prevented him from finishing the practice.

The South African kicked off the day by continuing his productive work from yesterday, leading the way in the last free session. Brad Binder was at the top from the start through to the conclusion of FP3, clocking his personal best on his penultimate lap – of 23 undertaken in total -, with a superb 1:23.876. On the other side of the box, Jorge Martin was pacing towards the top throughout the session and, on his last outing, the Spaniard took a big step forward, to finish seventh – 1:24.133.

The Red Bull KTM Ajo pair went straight into Q2, where they experienced mixed fortunes. Martin, who made steady progress, recorded his best lap of the weekend with 1:23.868, which places him in seventh position on the starting grid. His teammate, on the other hand, began the Q2 in a convincing fashion, putting himself in the mix for pole position and setting an initial 1:24.353. Unfortunately, Brad suffered a crash at Turn 3 with seven minutes remaining and was therefore unable to improve on his time.

The 28 lap Moto2 race at the German Grand Prix starts tomorrow at 12:20 pm local time, with the Red Bull KTM Ajo team eager to repeat the performance from the past weekend at Assen.

Results (Qualifying session)
1. Alex Marquez (Kalex) 1:23.585
2. Luca Marini (Kalex) 1:23.664 +0.079
3. Marcel Schrotter (Kalex) 1:23.667 +0.082
4. Fabio Di Giannantonio (Speed Up) 1:23.781 +0.196
5. Augusto Fernandez (Kalex) 1:23.823 +0.238
7. Jorge Martin (Red Bull KTM Ajo) 1:23.868 +0.283
17. Brad Binder (Red Bull KTM Ajo) 1:24.353 +0.768

41 BRAD BINDER

“It was a very unfortunate crash, because in FP3 we did a good job and we had the chance to get a front position on the grid. In the morning I felt fine. In Q2, however, the traffic prevented me from pushing harder in the first few laps. When I was finally able to start riding at my full pace I lost the front end in Turn 3 and unfortunately the bike was too damaged to go back out on track. Luckily tomorrow we still have the warm up, there is a lot of work to be done, but we are going to give it our best shot to depart from Germany with a great ending.”

88 JORGE MARTIN

“I’m happy because we got a good result for tomorrow’s grid. We had our best qualifying session of the year so far, so we are satisfied with the work put in. We had some problems, but we have also improved a lot in other aspects and that is important. I feel like we took a big step forward from FP3 to Q2, we will try to finish tuning the set-up of our bike tomorrow in the warm up. If we manage to solve those small problems we can gain one or two tenths and we will be ready to fight in the race.”