Repsol riders take turns at head of Saturday practice sessions and Marquez claims second pole of the season. Rins leads off the second row.
The second day of the Czech Republic Grand Prix was a positive one for Alex Rins and Alex Marquez. After their good start yesterday at Brno, the Repsol riders dominated on Saturday –with pole position for Marquez the highlight. He will head the grid tomorrow, with his teammate just behind at the top of the second row.
Both riders completed 15 laps in free practice today and confirmed the feeling from yesterday. The duo continued setting up their Honda machines for race day, adapting their bikes perfectly to the Czech track. Rins set the fastest time of the session on his last lap, with Marquez second a tenth behind.
The qualifying session did not start in the best way for Marquez, who crashed on his fourth lap when trying to avoid a large group of riders involved in an incident which has been involved. He was able to return to the pits to repair the damage to his bike. A red flag to fix a safety feature on the track bought him some time, and he was able to go back out with 10 minutes remaining.
Still second on the timesheet, Marquez managed to keep cutting tenths off his times and finally took a 2:07.691 lap for his second career pole. His previous qualifying top spot came at Barcelona this year. Rins was just three tenths behind his teammate with a 2:08.051, placing fourth for the race tomorrow –the eleventh of the season.
Alex Rins >> Audio
4th, 2’08.051 sec, 30 laps, 162 km.
“I’m happy with the result –even more so because I set my time riding alone. I am satisfied because we have improved a lot; if we compare the work done in this Grand Prix so far on the Friday and Saturday with other rounds, we can see that if you are focused on going fast from the beginning, things go differently. I think we have a good race pace, but we will have to wait until tomorrow to see how things develop when the tyres get used up. I think it will be a group race and a tough one because of it, so we will have to ride intelligently”.
Alex Marquez >> Audio
1st, 2’07.691, 25 laps, 135 km.
“I’m happy because it was a tough session due to the weather, my crash and the traffic on track. It was all a little strange. After my crash, the mechanics worked very hard and I want to apologise to all the team, because it was my mistake. Luckily we salvaged the situation in the the best way. For tomorrow we have a good pace but we must continue to work in the warmup to get everything clear for the race, on the final laps we will need to be aggressive and focused”.
