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Second and fifth row starts for Márquez and Pedrosa

The reigning World Champion will start French GP from fifth, despite a crash in qualifying. Pedrosa goes into Q1 and misses out on Q2 by just 0.048s.

 

· This is the first time that Marc Márquez has been off the front row this season.

 

· The Repsol Honda rider crashed in both the last free practice session and in qualifying.

 

· Dani Pedrosa rose from twenty-second position in FP3 to second in FP4 – the first session held with a completely dry track.

 

· The 1:32.416 lap time achieved by Pedrosa in Q1 would have placed him fifth in Q2.

 

Marc Márquez, 5th, 1:32.493 sec,

“We knew this is a track where we normally struggle a bit more than at others, but anyway we’re not so far off. We’re not yet where we would like to be but we’ll work hard this evening checking the data and hopefully we’ll be able to get a bit closer in tomorrow’s warm-up. We’ve had just one completely dry session so far this weekend, so FP4 was like a normal FP1, and with the new tarmac and everything we needed more track time, more laps to set up the bike and to adapt the riding style. As for the crashes, I had both of them in the same corner: regarding the one in FP4, I was trying to find the limit, and as for the one in qualifying, we had changed the setup a little bit and I probably should have done that corner a little bit differently. I was prepared for it in view of my second exit but then I had a little problem with the second tyre and couldn’t do a perfect lap. Anyway, of course we’ll do our best in the race.”

 

Dani Pedrosa, 13th, 1:32.415 sec,

“This weekend has been quite difficult in general, due to the weather that had us struggling with the tyre temperature. Then this morning during FP3 we had some little problems with the bike that meant I couldn’t improve my lap time and go directly to Q2. The FP4 session went quite well; we proved to have a good pace and that’s the positive part of today. It was the same way in Q1; we were fast but unfortunately just not enough to move through. Anyway, we must now think about tomorrow. We must be very focused on the start and in the first chicane, and we also must try and be quite aggressive in the first laps to recover positions. We’ll try our best and see where we end up.”

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