Saturday brings a second consecutive pole position for the Repsol Honda Team rider, who dominated the second day in Termas de Rio Hondo. Hiroshi Aoyama places 15th and will start from fifth row.
After the practice sessions on the second day of the Grand Prix of Argentina, Marc Marquez took a step forward in performance at the Termas de Río Hondo track. The Repsol Honda Team rider registered the best time of the qualifying session for the second successive round, notching the 52nd pole position of his career in the World Championship. His teammate, Hiroshi Aoyama, has also gradually improved in today’s sessions and will start the race tomorrow 15th.
After being the fastest in FP3 and FP4, Marc Marquez dominated the qualifying session. With a two-stop strategy in which he rapidly changed bike, the Repsol Honda Team rider took the initiative throughout, finally stopping the clock at 1:37.802. Aoyama, who was fifth in Q1, will start from the fifth row, in 15th place after setting a time of 1:39.715.
Tomorrow at 4pm –local time– Marc Márquez will head the grid for the third race of the year.
Marc Márquez >> Audio
1st | 1:37.802 | 42 laps | 202 km.
“I am happy today, because we were able to fight for pole and eventually got it. It was a lot of fun, because we used a three-tyre strategy and it worked well. It was important to start from the front tomorrow, because the track is quite dirty and that makes it harder to overtake. We’ll see what happens, we expect a pretty tough race with even higher temperatures than today. My strongest rivals –Jorge and Valentino– are starting from the second row, so I hope to have a good start and a strong race.”
Hiroshi Aoyama >> Audio Eng. >> Audio Jap.
15th | 1:39.715 | 42 laps | 202 km.
“Yesterday I struggled to find a good feeling with the bike and also this morning, I still wasn’t comfortable. Then this afternoon we changed something with the setup and I found some confidence on the bike which allowed me to push. In qualifying we made another step with the setup and improved the lap time but of course it’s not the position we had hoped for. We still have some areas to improve and I hope we can find a step in time for the race.”
