Marquez shatters lap record clinching sixth pole of the season with Pedrosa in 4th

Repsol Honda’s Marc Marquez has taken his sixth pole position of his MotoGP career with a blistering time of 1’32.915, over half a second faster than second place Lorenzo.

With this time he convincingly broke the pole record set by Casey Stoner in 2011 (1’33.138) but it wasn’t a totally straight forward session. Marc only had one bike to qualify on after a small crash in turn thirteen in this afternoon’s FP4 session and his crew didn’t have enough time to fix the damage before the 15 minute Q2.

Teammate Dani Pedrosa also had a difficult day with a small crash in this morning’s FP3. However, there was enough time to fix the damaged bike in time for qualifying but Dani, who has had grip issues all weekend, was unable to progress higher that 4th for tomorrow’s race with a time of 1’33.726.

Marc Marquez – 1st – 1’32.915
“I’m very happy with this pole position, as we had a really good hot lap! It’s a shame about the small crash that we had in practice this morning – which was completely my fault – but the important thing is that we know where I made the mistake. In qualifying I felt very comfortable every time on fast laps and was able to put in some quick times. We’ll see if we can fight with Jorge tomorrow, as he has a very good pace. Valentino will also be tough to beat, because it is his home race and he has been very strong in practice; I’m sure that he will be fast tomorrow as will Dani. The aim is to get a good start, try to ride in the lead group at the front and pick up more World Championship points”

Dani Pedrosa – 4th – 1’33.726
“We had a bit of luck to take fourth on the grid, because we have been having problems with all the rear tyres that we have used. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I didn’t have any grip in any of the sessions today. In the final free practice session we changed the tyres twice, then in qualifying we again switched to new rubber, but there was never a good response. We don’t know if the problem is with the tyres, with the bike or with the track surface. In the final moments we made another change and suddenly I had some grip again, and it is thanks to this that we were able to take the fourth fastest time -although this position was certainly short of our aims for today. For tomorrow, however, we are confident that we can get a good start and have a good race”

Source: Repsol Honda Team