Aegerter on fifth row at Phillip Island

Dominique Aegerter will start, on Sunday morning at 5:20am Swiss time, from the firth row of the starting grid for the Australian Moto2 Grand Prix. The race distance has been reduced to 13 laps instead of 25 due to serious problems with tyres from the official provider that several teams have been experiencing here in Australia. Thirteen fastest in this qualifying session, the Technomag-carXpert rider will have to have a good start, for which he is an expert, as that will be the key to success in this 'sprint' race.

Dominique Aegerter (13th): "I don't understand this decision to reduce the race distance to a half. What is the objective of a Grand Prix team? It is to adapt to different conditions, to find technical solutions, find a set-up of the bike that makes the tyres last the entire race distance. Those who damaged the tyres in only a few laps must have been doing something wrong, perhaps they wanted too much with a low pressure. This morning we decided to put more weight on the rear to realise the gravity of the problem; we knew that the tyre was not going to last, but we were interested to see for how long it would. And we found out. The gap of 0.6 seconds is not a big deal, what is worse is my starting position: 13th on a narrow track. It is not going to be easy to overtake many with such a short distance on the top of that."