Repsol Honda Team rider achieves best time in qualifying for the 73rd time in his career. Dani Pedrosa will start from the second row, in fifth position.
Marc Márquez led the entire second day of practice for the Valencia Grand Prix: He was fastest in FP3, FP4 and Q2.
The World Championship leader has taken 73 poles in his career –including eight this season– and this is the third time he has achieved the best qualifying time at the Ricardo Tormo Circuit, where he has been on the podium for five years in a row (two wins, two second places and a third).
Dani Pedrosa set the fifth fastest time of the day in Q2, after finishing ninth in FP3 and third in FP4.
Marc Márquez – 1st
“I’m extremely happy that today we’ve achieved our goal of starting from the front row, as the start is very important at this track. I had a crash in qualifying that frustrated me for a bit, though only for a few minutes. The fact is that I did not feel totally comfortable with the front in turn 4 during my first flying lap, and when I told Santi (Hernández) before going out for my second run he told me to pay attention to this. I kept pushing because I knew that I had to do so if I wanted to be faster, but then I fell. As I said on Thursday, the ‘Marquez style’ will be okay until after the warm up, and that I want to work in the same way as always, pushing hard during the practices. The most important thing is that we’ve worked well all weekend and that we’ve got a good pace on used tires. For the race we must make a switch and change. We must see where Dovi is, where we can finish and do our best.”
Dani Pedrosa – 5th
“We worked a lot on the pace this weekend but still have to make our final tire choice for the race, because the temperature may change tomorrow. The qualifying session did not go as well as we would’ve liked because unfortunately I couldn’t do the perfect lap, and also because I came across some traffic during my fastest lap. Still, even though we are starting from the 5th position tomorrow, we’ll try and make a good start and to stay at the front from the beginning. There are a handful of riders with a good pace, including Marc, Lorenzo and a few others, but in the race we’ll have to see what the strategy is for each of them, which depends on their tire choices. Regardless, we’ll be sure to give 100% because it would be great to finish the season with a strong result.”
