MotoGP Catalunya: Tyre choice thwarts Dixon’s front row challenge

Inde GasGas Aspar’s Jake Dixon will line up on the Moto2 second row alongside teammate Albert Arenas once again for round nine at Barcelona.

The Brit looked to be on for his fourth front row start of the season at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on Saturday before a late charge from championship leader Celestino Vietti relegated him to fourth at the flag. Dixon’s 1’44.045 third lap effort was just 0.043s off third place man Joe Roberts and two-tenths adrift of the outright pole time despite the afternoon’s soaring Spanish temperatures.

Having been firmly at the top of the times cross the Catalan weekend, the 26-year-old secured direct entry to the Q2 fight with the second strongest morning lap, set on just his third of FP3, to complete the 40-minute session once again narrowly behind the American - this time by a mere 0.001s. The British rider later regretting the choice to use rather than save one more set of tyres for qualifying practice after bagging the impressive time, which would have allowed him one last shot at pole. “It’s been a good weekend overall and our race pace is good,” Dixon confirmed from Barcelona. “It’s a shame we missed the front row at the end, but fourth place is fine.

“If I had to repeat today’s work, maybe I would have saved a tyre for qualifying instead of using it in the third free practice when we knew we were going to go through anyway. This would have allowed us to have one more opportunity to fight for pole position.”