Marc Marquez takes 7th consecutive Sachsenring pole, 10th place for Dani Pedrosa

The Repsol Honda team riders took a step forward on the second day of practice for the German Grand Prix. Marc Marquez led the third free practice session and was second in FP4, with Dani Pedrosa sixth and third, respectively.

In qualifying, the World Championship leader set the pace from the start, but would not secure pole until his final lap of 1:21.160. Marquez was more than 4 tenths faster than his nearest rival, and will start the German GP from pole for the seventh consecutive season. He has managed 6 wins in a row at Sachsenring in all classes.

Teammate Pedrosa did not have his previous good feeling in Q2, and has set a time of 1:21.892 that was just 2 tenths off third place. He placed tenth in a tight qualifying session.

Marc Marquez
“I am happy to have set the fastest time today, because we are better here than at other circuits and I have a fairly good pace; I am riding comfortably. The final free practice session was not one of the best of the weekend, as I didn’t feel completely right –phrase deleted but we made a change for the qualifying session and that went much better. We need to study the data this afternoon, but in qualifying we managed to take that step forward that we needed. We’ll see what happens tomorrow, because the weather forecast is for conditions to be quite unstable, but in any case we will try to finish on the podium, which is our goal, because it seems that Valentino [Rossi] is very strong and we will also have to keep Dani [Pedrosa] in mind; I don’t know what happened to him in qualifying, but his pace is very close to ours and he is very strong here.”

Dani Pedrosa
“It’s a pity we weren’t able to be faster in qualifying after having been so fast in the free practices. I wasn’t able to make a big enough improvement to the lap time I had set with used tyres, and honestly I don’t know why. It’s not good to be that far back on the grid at this track because the first part is quite tight, but we need to focus on the race anyway. We’ll have to get a good start, be fast on the first lap and gain as many positions as possible, because our pace is good and the race is long. Of course it won’t be easy—we also have to see what the weather will be like—but we’ll stay positive and try to do our best.”

Source: Repsol Media