Repsol rider second in qualifying, 0.072 from best time of the evening. Tomorrow he returns to the front row for his return from injury at last year’s Malaysian GP.
The admirable return of Marc Márquez to action continued with second place in qualifying for the Qatar GP. In his first qualifying session since October last year, in Australia, he put in a great performance. Only the traffic on track for his final fast lap attempts and 72 thousandths of a second separated him from pole position, taken by Thomas Luthi.
After 2 days and 3 sessions of free practice, the Losail International Circuit was lit up this evening for qualifying. Marc Márquez has been steadily finetuning his Moto2 bike in practice, and in qualifying he bounced back from initial front end and back wheel handling issues to put himself on the front row for the Qatar GP.
The Repsol rider will start from second, having clocked a time 0.072 off that of Thomas Luthi. He undertook an additional 3 laps after his fastest time, but was caught up in traffic and unable to improve his position.
Marc Márquez >> Audio
QP – 2:00.259, 18 laps, 97 km.
“To tell the truth, this session went better than we were expecting. We have been looking for the best setting and getting more kilometres under our belts throughout the weekend and we found an improvement. We have been working with the race in mind, although in the warmup we will be trying out a couple more things. I think that we’ve done a great job, because I wasn’t expecting to be on the front row. We will be going out to enjoy the race tomorrow, because even though I don’t have the pace that the others do, we will still be giving 100% and trying to take as many points as possible.”
