Repsol Honda Team riders finish the qualifying session with Márquez setting the sixth fastest time and Pedrosa twentieth.
Marc Márquez was the fastest in the first Free Practice session of the day and finished fourth in FP4.
The MotoGP World Championship leader was 246 thousandths of a second off pole, a time that he clocked using his first set of tyres. With the second, several scares prevented him from improving his time.
Dani Pedrosa finished twelfth in FP3 and missed out on direct access to Q2. He suffered a crash at Turn 11 during FP4, which he finished with the twenty second best time, and was tenth in Q1.
MARC MÁRQUEZ | 6th 1’46.454
“I’m happy with today, even if we’ll start sixth tomorrow, as I wasn’t able to put together the best lap. Actually, I was doing a very fast one during my second exit but then I made a mistake. Here, we have a tyre allocation that’s a bit too soft for us and that’s why we struggle a bit, especially in the afternoon, when the temperature is higher. In qualifying we ran out of the front spec option I prefer, and when I started pushing hard I overheated the front in the space of three corners. I had to be really smooth. We’ll see what conditions we’ll have tomorrow, but in any case we’ll have to adapt to them as well as possible and try and get some good points.”
DANI PEDROSA | 20th 1’48.065
“So far we’ve had a very difficult weekend here at Mugello, constantly struggling with the lack of grip. I was never able to be fast on track. Besides that, after a crash in FP4, I couldn’t use the bike in the following Q1, and the second one had a different setup. We didn’t have time to modify it, and I wasn’t able to do a good lap. The only thing to do now is remain focused on the race and do our best tomorrow.”
