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<\/p>\nMotoGP grand prix winners Johann Zarco and Jack Miller were key figures in the final part of qualifying for the 2025 Suzuka 8 Hours, as Zarco delivered pole and a lap record for Honda.<\/p>\n
Dubbed the ‘Top 10 Trial’, the Saturday session featured the 10 best crews on combined average times from Friday qualifying – although this time it was the best individual laptime for each entry that counted, with two riders from each bike getting a single lap each.<\/p>\n
Miller, representing Yamaha at the event, had already gone under the lap record in practice earlier in the day, so looked a big threat for pole.<\/p>\n
The #73 Honda was top of the rankings for a long spell thanks to the effort by Yuki Kunii, a Moto2 rookie this year, but Miller was nine tenths up on Kunii’s lap after three sectors and on course to demolish the benchmark when he tipped into Suzuka’s lap-concluding chicane.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He lost control of the bike on the change of direction, skidding sideways through the corner before having a highside – one slow enough to where Miller immediately got up and remounted to complete the lap 11 seconds off the pace.<\/p>\n
Back in the pit garage, he watched nervously as team-mate Andrea Locatelli, Yamaha’s lead World Superbike rider, fired in an impressive 2m04.316s – which Miller met with an emotional “Yes! Let’s go!”.<\/p>\n
“I just changed directions a little bit quickly on the chicane,” Miller explained afterwards. “She said no more. <\/p>\n
“It was a perfect lap up until that point, I felt really comfortable, the bike is working really well. Unfortunately I made it hard for Andrea, not having a good lap in the bank – but he did a fantastic job.”<\/p>\n
But with Zarco in the #30 Honda still coming up, the LCR MotoGP rider – a defending winner of the race – was 0.150s up on Locatelli after three sectors and just held an advantage over the line despite seemingly locking the tyre into the chicane.<\/p>\n
Zarco’s 2m04.290s beat Locatelli’s time by 0.026s and stands as the new pole record.<\/p>\n
“We didn’t need to have pressure because our work is in a different category [race pace] – but the pressure was coming,” said Zarco. <\/p>\n
“I didn’t expect to have this low [2m]04[s]. I saw the Yamaha this morning in free practice improving the laptime a lot, I was a little bit worried, but when Jack didn’t finish the lap, I kind of breathed. But then I saw the 2m04s of Loca…”<\/p>\n
Naomichi Uramoto, the fastest rider in qualifying, put the #76 Suzuki third on the grid but was seven tenths back from Zarco and Locatelli.<\/p>\n
Top 10 on the grid<\/p>\n
1 #30 Honda (Takumi Takahashi\/Johann Zarco)*
2 #21 Yamaha (Katsuyuki Nakasuga\/Jack Miller\/Andrea Locatelli)
3 #76 Suzukia (Naomichi Uramoto\/Loris Baz\/Davey Todd)
4 #73 Honda (Teppei Nagoe\/Keito Abe\/Yuki Kunii)
5 #37 BMW (Markus Reiterberger\/Michael van der Mark\/Steven Odendaal)
6 #7 Yamaha (Karel Hanika\/Marvin Fritz\/Jason O’Halloran)
7 #1 Suzuki (Gregg Black\/Dan Linfoot\/Cocoro Atsumi)
8 #3 Ducati (Ryo Mizuno\/Marcel Schrotter\/Leon Haslam)
9 #40 Honda (Satoru Iwata\/Koki Suzuki\/Takuma Kunimine)
10 #17 Honda (Kohta Nozane\/Kohta Arakawa\/Ryusei Yamanaka)<\/p>\n
*#30 Honda down to two riders for the race due to injuries and logistical issues
Riders in bold set the team’s best laptime in pole shootout<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MotoGP grand prix winners Johann Zarco and Jack Miller were key figures in the final part of qualifying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-39818","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}