Moto2

Thomas Lüthi (Interwetten Paddock) continued his excellent weekend in Qatar by securing pole position for the opening race of the 2012 Moto2 World Championship. The Swiss rider topped Saturday's qualifying session with a time of 2'00.187, after being fastest in all three preceding practice runs.

Lüthi managed to see off the challenge of Marc Márquez (Team CatalunyaCaixa Repsol) by a margin of just 0.072s as the Spaniard took second spot in the session, with Andrea Iannone (Speed Master) completing the front row in a time of 2'00.296 as fractionally more than a tenth of a second separated the top three.

Pol Espargaró (Pons 40 HP Tuenti) posted the fourth fastest time of the 45-minute session, ahead of Mike di Meglio (S/Master Speed Up) and Max Neukirchner (Kiefer Racing), all of whom will start from row two.

Clocking in seventh quickest was Esteve Rabat (Pons 40 HP Tuenti), and Claudio Corti (Italtrans Racing Team) recovered from an early fall in which he appeared to have hurt a hand to qualify in eighth position. Takaaki Nakagami (Italtrans Racing Team) will accompany his teammate on the third row.

British duo Bradley Smith (Tech 3 Racing) and Scott Redding (Marc VDS Racing Team) lapped 12th and 13th fastest respectively as they took spots on the fourth and fifth rows. Rookie Gino Rea (Federal Oil Gresini Moto2) qualified in 27th for his first Grand Prix.

Johann Zarco (JiR Moto2) was another rider who had a fall, and by the time the Frenchman went down at the very end of the session he had qualified in 19th.

Moto2 will run a 20-minute warm up session for the race at 9.55pm local time on Saturday evening.