Bagnaia says conserving tyres key for good result in Barcelona

The Italian qualified seventh but felt he had more time after he was stuck behind fellow rivals on his last attempt.

"In the last laps of qualifying I lost a lot of time when I got stuck behind other riders, but starting a Moto3 race in seventh is very good," he said after qualifying.

"We have done good work in practice and qualifying and we have good pace for the race on Sunday.

"I will do my best and stay in the front group and try to achieve another good result for my team," he added.

In a tight session, the VR46 rider finished just 0.415s behind polesitter Brad Binder on a revised Circuit de Catalunya-Barcelona, after the tragic incident on Friday.

The 18-year-old added while the Formula 1 layout doesn't give any advantage to its bike, they don't stand to lose time either and stressed tyres will be key in the race.

"We had to change the settings a bit [due to layout changes] because you have to brake more and really stop the bike," he starts.

"The new setting we tried in FP3 was much better, and I think we’ll take another big step in the Warm Up to try and find a setting that will also conserve the tyres in the race."

Mahindra have also provided a new gear shifter to all the customer teams this weekend but they all are still assessing whether they want to use it in the race.

Arenas leads the pack behind

Meanwhile, wildcard entrant Albert Arenas led the Mahindra pack finishing 17th, the Spanish rider was impressive being 0.864s off Binder's time in only his second outing this year.

Jorge Martin had a difficult run ending 22nd while a late crash for Tatsuki Suzuki (CIP) kept the Japanese rider 24th.

The lead Peugeot of John McPhee was 26th as teammate Alexis Masbou endured a tough time at 33rd sandwiched between Team Italia riders Stefano Valtulini (32nd) and Lorenzo Petrarca (34th).

Suzuki's teammate Fabio Spiranelli finished 35th as Platinum Bay's Darryn Binder and Karel Hanika were 30th and 31st.