Aleix Espargaró put together one of his strongest qualifying performances of the MotoGP™ season in today’s final Q2 at the Brno circuit in the Czech Republic, classifying fourth and being pushed-off a front-row starting position in the closing seconds.

Both Espargaró – still in some pain from the fractured hand incurred last weekend in Austria - and team-mate Maverick Viñales, were always in the top positions at the HJC Helmets Grand Prix Ceské republiky 11th round with both automatically making selection to Q2 from this morning’s FP3 session where Viñales finished fourth with a lap of 1’55.604 and Espargaró sixth on 1’55.793.

After both riders used FP4 to test various settings on their Team SUZUKI ECSTAR GSX-RRs, the final 15-minute Q2 session, to determine the front four-rows-of-the-grid tomorrow, saw Viñales the top Suzuki with seven minutes to go (in sixth), before Espargaro jumped into third position with less than 60 seconds to go with a time of 1'55.324. But he lost his front-row slot with a matter of seconds to go by just 0.097s.