The Repsol Honda Team rider sets the best qualifying time at the only circuit where he has not been on pole in the premier class. Jorge Lorenzo will start nineteenth
Marc Márquez headed the timesheets for practically all of FP3, held in the rain, and was only overcome on the last lap of the session -by 174 thousandths of a second.
In FP4, with the track drying out steadily, he was fastest with an advantage of more than 1.3 seconds over his nearest rival.
In Q2, the new MotoGP World Champion was once again the pacesetter from start to finish, claiming his 90th career pole. The pole was his first at Motegi in MotoGP, adding to those in 125cc in 2010 and Moto2 in 2011.
Jorge Lorenzo, 22nd in FP3 and FP4, was ninth in Q1 and will start from the seventh row of the grid on raceday, in nineteenth position.
Marc Márquez | 1st 1’45.763
“First pole position on the MotoGP bike in Motegi is great, it was the last one missing! It’s a circuit that I usually struggle at a bit but today the setup was working very well in Qualifying and I was able to ride in a different way. I felt very strong during Free Practice 4 but the conditions weren’t really normal. It was still a bit wet out on track, tomorrow we will have a lot of pressure from Yamaha and Dovizioso, so we still need to work a bit in Warm Up. The target is to finish in the podium, let’s see what the conditions are.”
Jorge Lorenzo | 1’48.492
“A very tough day for me as I always find the mixed conditions difficult and there were still two points on track where there was a lot of water so we had to be careful. I was losing a lot of time there and that’s why we were unable to repeat our speed from yesterday, which is unfortunate. Now we start 19th which is not ideal, but I am hopeful for good weather. If it is dry in Warm Up and for the race, we can improve on the results of previous races.”
