Second in both this morning’s and yesterday’s free practices, Marc Márquez has raised the bar and topped the timesheet of qualifiers of the Malaysian Grand Prix. Esteve Rabat also put in an excellent performance, making the second row of the grid after finishing the qualifying session in sixth place. Scott Redding will start in seventeenth place tomorrow and Cameron Beaubier, twenty-fourth.
With very consistent riding throughout the three practice sessions held at the Sepang Circuit, Marc Márquez has become one of the main candidates in the fight for victory tomorrow. This is demonstrated by the pole position that he achieved in the qualifiers, after moving into the front group from the start of the practice. The Repsol rider, making the most of the good performance of his KTM under the difficult conditions of the Malaysian circuit, also knew how to take advantage of the slipstream on the long straights of Sepang to clock up a time that nobody was able to beat at the end of the qualifying session.
Starting from the row behind will be Esteve Rabat, who achieved the sixth best time of the day. The Repsol rider has also been very consistent throughout today’s and yesterday’s practices, confirming the good impressions shown in previous races. Rabat finished 930 milliseconds behind Márquez, satisfied with the improvements made to the handling of his Aprilia, but a little disappointed with the performance of the engine, which has not been up to the standard of previous races.
Today, his teammate, Scott Redding, was not able to confirm the progress he demonstrated yesterday. The Repsol rider is finding it difficult to identify effective improvements that help him to reduce his lap times and move up in the standings. Tomorrow, he will start seventeenth, heading the fifth row, and aim to move up several positions to finish into the top ten. Cameron Beaubier, who is debuting on the Sepang track, has a different target; today he finished twenty-fourth after difficulties setting up his KTM.
Marc Márquez, 2’13.756 sec, 30 laps, 166 km >> Audio
“We’ve got pole position, and that’s important. It was a hard fight; it truly was, because in Le Mans I achieved it on a wet track. Here, we’ve been up front all weekend, working on the race pace. We’re having very good practices and that’s always important for the race. But tomorrow will be another day. I’m sure that we’ll race as a group and will have to wait until the final laps to go all out. I think we’ve got a good pace and we tackle it quite well. To leave the starting grid next to the new World Champion always gives you that extra push, but all of my rivals ride fast and the KTM is working well. It’s going to improve with the heat and we are closer to the Aprilias, so tomorrow we’ll try and have a good fight with them all”.
Esteve Rabat, 2’14.686 sec, 30 laps, 166 km >> Audio
“We’re having a quite positive weekend. In this practice, we’ve seen some aspects of the chassis that are going to be improved. The engine however, which has always gone really well, is only just up to it here. We’ll try to get a good start tomorrow to catch onto the front group. We’ll have to try to resolve a few small problems we still have, with the performance of the back tyre and tune up the engine a bit more. I’m really happy with the team, because they’ve worked well and we’ve constantly improved and they’ve set up a bike to be up front”.
Scott Redding, 2’15.484 sec, 28 laps, 155 km >> Audio
“This time it didn’t go so well. Everything that we change on the bike is not resulting in improved times or position. I always give 100%, but the bike is performing as it were at half speed. We’ve struggled a lot up until now, changing many adjustments without noticing any improvement. Tomorrow, we’ll have to wait and see what happens in the race and how we endure the laps”.
Cameron Beaubier, 2’16.533 sec, 29 laps, 161 km >> Audio
“We had a technical problem this morning, therefore, I had to spend the first part of the practice running in the engine. Then we made a few changes to the rear wheel, but I didn’t feel comfortable and rode very slowly. We restored the adjustments that went well in the morning and I managed to clock up same times as the second free practice, but I couldn’t improve on that. I’m starting from quite a way back on the grid tomorrow, and I’m a little frustrated”.
