World Championship leader to start from second on grid for Japanese Grand Prix, following single qualifying session in which Dani Pedrosa placed fourth.
Things are slowly returning to normal at the Twin Ring Motegi circuit, where today a single qualifying session was held to decide the grid for the Japanese Grand Prix. Marc Marquez set the second fastest time of the day and his teammate, Dani Pedrosa, the fourth quickest in a shootout in which Jorge Lorenzo took pole.
Following the suspension of Friday’s schedule due to fog, heavy rain reduced the activity on track to a single session per category today, once the amount of water accumulated on the track had been reduced. It was almost 1pm local time before the Moto3 riders were able to debut the track for the weekend, and just before 2pm the premier class had its turn. In the 75-minute session four riders fought for the top spot, which eventually went to Jorge Lorenzo. Marc Marquez and Nicky Hayden complete the front row, with Dani Pedrosa just 3 thousandths of a second behind the latter in fourth place.
Dani Pedrosa >> Audio
QP – 1:54.542, 28 laps, 134 km.
“It was a long wait, but in the end we were finally able to put some laps in and I tried to get the best out of this wet session. We led the timesheet for a long time, but in the final ten minutes we had some problems with the tyres I used. I wasn’t able to ride as well as I wanted and we eventually took fourth. Tomorrow we will try to get a good start and we will see if the warmup is dry beforehand, in order to try out everything possible with the bike and tyres.”
Marc Marquez >> Audio
QP – 1:54.129, 27 laps, 130 km.
“Today was a different kind of qualifying session, like those from the past with a lot of track time, as we had an hour and fifteen minutes. It is the first time that I’ve ridden here in MotoGP at Motegi and in addition it was wet and I didn’t have time to set the bike up, but nevertheless I think we had a good session. We achieved our aim of a spot on the front row. Tomorrow’s race is forecast to be dry, and it will be interesting as nobody has had time to find a good setup.”
