MotoGP Assen: ‘I did not expect that today!’ - Dixon

Inde GasGas Aspar’s Jake Dixon celebrated his second Moto2 pole position of the season with an unexpected 1’36.736 lap of the TT Circuit Assen on Saturday.

Having initially struggled in both wet and dry conditions across the opening two days of the Dutch weekend, despite favouring the 4.5km layout previously in his career, everything seemed to click for Dixon as he came in for fresh rubber in the closing stages of the 15-minute session.

“Honestly, I did not expect that today and all credit to the team then. I left it so late to come into the pits for a tyre,” Dixon explained from Parc Fermé.

“I didn’t think I had enough time. They got me out for one lap. Honestly speaking, on the out lap, I didn’t think it was going to be enough because I didn’t know if the rear tyre was going to be with me but no, I just I pushed like hell.

“Just a massive credit to the team. I’ve been struggling all weekend and got after it in that session. To the boys and to the team, after a big struggling weekend, that’s a massive repay to them and hopefully we can have a great race tomorrow.”

Reflecting on how late he’d left it to make his decision to change tyres, after struggling for the first part of the session, the Brit was in fine spirits.

“Well, I just got the news that my team have now moved to F1 because the stint of changing the tyre was super fast!” he joked.

“No, it was good but I made the split decision right at the last part and I was like ‘do I stay out or do I not? I don’t feel great with this tyre’ and then finally came in. I knew it was going to be tight so I knew I had to push on the out lap but then with the Dunlop it takes a couple of laps usually to come in so I pushed as hard as I could on the out lap.

“I went through