2013 Brno MotoGP Saturday Round Up: Of Qualifying (Mis)Practice, Getting A Tow, And New Dunlolps

You could have earned yourself a tidy sum today if you'd correctly predicted the MotoGP front row. Though Cal Crutchlow, Alvaro Bautista and Marc Marquez are all familiar faces on the front row, the combination of the three was quite unexpected. Crutchlow earned his second ever MotoGP pole at Brno, shattering the pole record on his way to doing it. Bautista was on the front row at Laguna Seca, but his previous front row appearance was pole position at Silverstone over a year ago. And Marquez is a regular patron of the front row, but in four of his eight front row starts, he has had pole. The combination of the three was a surprise, and a testament to the way the new qualifying system this year manages to throw up surprises.

That is not to everyone's taste. 'This type of practice, with 15 minutes, is not very fair,' was Valentino Rossi's opinion, after the Italian had once again failed to break into the first two rows of the grid. 'A lot of riders are able to take the right slipstream and improve a lot the lap time and also the position they usually have in practice. So is not just about the potential but also about being in the right place at the right moment and make a good lap with the guy in front.' Qualifying has been Rossi's Achilles heel ever since the introduction of the new system, which coincided with his return to Yamaha.

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