Source: MotoGP.

Tito Rabat starts from pole in Moto2 at the Shell Advance Malaysian Motorcycle Grand Prix, as he looks to clinch the title, with Mika Kallio and Sandro Cortese completing the front row.

A time of 2m07.429 put Rabat (Marc VDS Racing Team) on pole ahead of title rival and teammate Kallio, who was just 0.158s slower. The front row was completed by Cortese (Dynavolt Intact GP), who was 0.277s behind Rabat.

It was a dominant pole performance for the championship leader, never leaving the top spot on the timesheets. This is Rabat’s 10th pole position of the season.

A top two finish by Kallio is the only way for him to postpone the title decider to Valencia and even then the Finn would be relying on Rabat’s result, with 41 points between them and two races to go.

The top five was completed by impressive rookie Maverick Viñales (Paginas Amarillas HP 40) and the resurgent Thomas Luthi (Interwetten Sitag), who both finished on the podium last time out at Phillip Island. Takaaki Nakagami (IDEMITSU Honda Team Asia) is also on row two.

Julian Simon (Italtrans Racing Team), Johann Zarco (AirAsia Caterham), Dominique Aegerter (Technomag CarXpert) and Axel Pons (AGR Team) completed the top 10, all within 0.715s of pole. The top 17 were split by just one second.

QMMF Racing Team’s Anthony West qualified down on row nine in 26th place, 1.980s outside of the pole time set by Rabat.

Mattia Pasini (NGM Forward Racing) had a strange front end crash at turn one early in the session. Lorenzo Baldassarri (Gresini Moto2) and Ricky Cardus (Tech 3) also suffered small offs. Thitipong Warokorn (APH PTT The Pizza SAG) slid off at turn 15 in the second half of the session. All riders were unhurt.

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