Rookie Augusto Fernandez continued to find his marks on Saturday at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. The GASGAS Tech3 rider rode his fastest lap in 1’41.105 in Free Practice 2 as he took P15 of the session, just before heading to qualifying 1. A small breath of panic started to take over the paddock when very light drops of rain started to fall just minutes before QP1, but luckily that fainted quickly, leaving the track dry. The rookie joined a few big names (Marc Marquez, Jack Miller, Fabio Quartararo,…) in Q1, and rode his best in 1'39.794. That was a bit short to make it to the next qualifying session, and it meant that he qualified in nineteenth for Tissot Sprint number 11 of 2023. When lights went out at 15:00 local time under dark clouds, the Spaniard took a decent start and went to P15 within one lap to find himself behind Luca Marini. On lap 3, he rode his fastest lap of the race in 1’40.367. However, low grip has been a known issue of the Catalan layout, and the Spaniard appeared to suffer a quite big front tyre drop quickly into the race, which saw him losing positions to his rivals, including teammate Pol Espargaro. He then found himself in a fight with Jack Miller and Franco Morbidelli, managed to overtake the KTM Factory Racing rider, but was overtaken shortly after that. Morbidelli eventually passed the two of them with only a few laps to go. Augusto Fernandez completed the Tissot Sprint in seventeenth, not the result he was hoping for, but luckily there is another chance tomorrow in the main race.

After missing out on a Q2 ticket by 0.028 seconds on Friday, Pol Espargaro had another shot this morning in qualifying. Before that, there were another thirty minutes of free practice to prepare in the best way possible. At 10:50, he joined his teammate on track for Q1 as he tried to come on top of the rest. He rode his fastest in 1’39.330, but this time that was 0.260 seconds too short to make it to the next qualifying session, with Miguel Oliveira and Marc Marquez making the cut. That meant that he lined up in P14 on the grid for the Tissot Sprint in front of home fans. At the race start, the Catalan did not handle his start perfectly, appearing to struggle with his clutch. When corner 1 came in, he found himself a bit stuck with Luca Marini overbraking, which caused the GASGAS Tech3 rider to lose his right wing, a key asset to ensure the perfect stability of the bike. He had to quickly find new reference points without it, and once he did so, he started to recover progressively, even overtaking teammate Augusto Fernandez and Jack Miller. Unfortunately, as he struggled to brake, he made a mistake in turn 4 of lap 4, went straight into the gravel, and fell. That’s a DNF for Pol today, but luckily there is another big chance to do something good on Sunday’s race, when lights go out at 14:00 on Catalan lands!