FIM Yamaha R3 BLU CRU World Cup championship leader Xarly Mendez will start on pole position for a second consecutive round after setting the quickest time in Friday’s Superpole session at MotorLand Aragon.
Mendez’ time of 2’13.046 places him 0.311 seconds ahead of his closest rival, Riichi Takahira (Japan) and Emmanuele Pastore (Italy). Mendez (Dominican Republic) was second in the morning’s free practice session but upped the pace in the afternoon’s 38 degree heat to secure his second pole in a row.
Rintaro Takemoto (Japan) heads up an all-non-European row two, ahead of Leonardo Marques (Brazil) and Kakeru Okunuki (Japan).
Angelo Mottola (Italy), who led the way in the free practice session, had to settle for seventh on the third row and will line-up ahead of Aymon Bocanegra (Brazil) and Mauro Gomez (Spain). Hinata Okada (Japan) completes the top ten.
The first race of the weekend gets underway on Saturday at 10:20 local time, and will be streamed live on the Yamaha Racing YouTube channel, here.
Click HERE for the Free Practice results and HERE for the Superpole results.
Discussing his pole position, Mendez said: “I am very happy with pole position, Superpole was a little bit difficult because the group was very big, so track position was very important, but I managed to make a good lap and do enough for pole position. Tomorrow, I will give it my all to achieve the best results possible, the races are always very close, but we will try our best to be on the podium.”