First he took pole position with a lap time a staggering 1.736 seconds under Toni Eliaas 2010 mark, with a 2m 00.168s effort. He then used his pole position to good effect, motoring into an instant lead on his Viessmann Kiefer Racing Kalex machine and stretching away to win comfortably by 4.33 seconds over Andrea Iannone (Speed Master Suter).
Although Bradl looked untroubled out front, the truth was he was running at record shattering pace: his race time of 40m 11.768s waas a staggering 33.219 seconds under the winning mark set by the late Shoya Tomizawa in the inaugural year of the class at Losail last year.
To put that in perspective, Bradl was lapping at an average of 1.66 seconds per lap faster this year than last year’s winner.
Behind him was the usual Moto2 bunfight, but by the race’s mid-point, Iannone had ridden his way into second place, but was in a battle with Yuki Takahashi (Gresini Racing Moriwaki), Thomas Luthi (Interwetten Paddock Suter) and Alex De Angelis (JiR Motobi).
It seemed Takahashi had a little bit of speed on the long straight, and would come past Iannone there, but the Italian would rider harder through the corners to peel that back.
With two laps to go, Iannone got his head down and gapped Takahasi, who had Luthi dive inside him for third, with De Angelis doing the same thing on the final lap to take fourth, leaving the Japanese a close fifth in an enthralling battle for the minor podium places.
Full results: http://resources.motogp.com/files/results/xx/2011/QAT/Moto2/RAC/Classification.pdf?v1_925165fa