Qualifying, Moto3, Brno: Malaysian rookie Danish edges out Spaniard

Hot air shimmered over the tarmac as the youngsters in the GP circus kicked off the afternoon’s crucial qualifying sessions. The overarching aim was to secure a place amongst the top 14 Moto3 riders to qualify directly for the second qualifying session on Saturday.

There had already been a minor surprise that morning. Rookie Hakim Danish, racing at the Brno circuit for the first time, finished first in the opening session of the Czech GP. World Championship leader Maximo Quiles had made a confident start to the ninth round of the 2026 season, finishing fifth.

Quiles stepped up his pace at the start of the 35-minute qualifying session. However, his time of 2:06.630 minutes did not hold as the fastest for long. Intact GP rider David Almansa was a few hundredths of a second faster. There was also some excitement in the Aspar pit at the start, as Marco Morelli had been thrown from his KTM, sporting CFMOTO colours, at Turn 7.

After ten minutes, the session was, as so often, dominated by the Spanish riders: Almansa ahead of Quiles and Alvaro Carpe, all riding KTM bikes. Hakim Danish found himself in fifth place after the first round of action, behind the top Honda rider, Eddie O’Shea. Shortly afterwards, the yellow flags came out again following a crash by Joel Esteban in Turn 12. The Spaniard was lucky and managed to get his KTM back on track.

Rookie Rico Salmela made a strong impression. Riding the Tech3-KTM, the young Finn held on to 7th place. Marcos Urirate was equally impressive. Replacing the injured David Munoz at Intact-GP, his namesake Brian Uriarte (Red Bull KTM Ajo) was shown in tenth place on the timing screen.

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MotoGP World Championship

28.08.2026 - 08:55

One challenge in Moto3 is the lap time of over two minutes resulting from the track’s length of more than 5.4 km. Consequently, it was crucial to time the decisive phase of qualifying correctly. With ten minutes left on the clock, most of the field had returned to the pits. Almansa was back out on the track early. The Spaniard, wearing number 22, managed to improve his time on a solo run on the heated track. Almansa was the first Moto3 rider to break the 2:05 mark.

For a long time, Intact-GP’s solo strategy seemed to be paying off. Whilst the positions from P2 onwards were being reshuffled and Quiles was pushed down to fifth place by Ogden and Danish, the 2:04.944 remained at the top of the timesheets.

Rookie Casey O’Gorman caused the marshals to be called out again following a highside in the Omega. It was not until a minute before the chequered flag that the track was fully reopened. Enough time for Hakim Danish. The Malaysian repeated his top performance from FP1 and set a new fastest time on his final lap: 2:07.754 min. Whilst Almansa defended P2, the World Championship leader moved back up to second place. The final spot in Q2 went to Leopard rider Guido Pini; the Honda rider pushed rookie Veda Pratama back into Q1 at the last minute.

In front of a large crowd of motorcycling fans from Austria, Leo Rammerstorfer was denied a place in the highly coveted Q2 session. The rookie from Linz finished the session in 18th place, 1.4 seconds off the pace, after a significant improvement.