Marc Márquez continued to underline his current form, taking his seventh pole of the season with a time of 1’48.124 seconds, 479 milliseconds faster than his nearest rival today. Starting from first place on the grid, he will have to consolidate this dominance in tomorrow’s race to defend his 15 point advantage in the overall classification.
In the early practice session, the Repsol rider showed that yesterday’s best time was an indication that, despite not having fully recovered from a shoulder injury, in normal conditions his rivals would find it hard to beat him. This morning, with better weather conditions than yesterday -20ºC air temperature and 29ºC on the track-, he was already putting in faster times, lapping under last year’s ‘pole’ time and the track race record. After trying a few different tweaks to the front end setup of the Aprilia, Márquez stopped the clock at 1’48.424 seconds.
In qualifying, Repsol’s rider continued to blaze a trail, and after five minutes was already lapping under 1.49. Setting an extraordinary pace, Márquez continued to put in faster laps, and despite a scare five minutes from the end, and seeing Terol attempting to take pole from him, the Repsol rider pulled a few tenths of a second out of the hat to take top spot on the grid with almost half a second to spare, with a final time of 1’.48.124 seconds.
From this position, Márquez will obviously be the one to beat in tomorrow’s race, which starts at 18:00 hours (CET), as he sets out to extend his 15 point advantage in the overall classification.
Marc Márquez, 1’48.124 sec, 32 laps, 135 km. >> Audio
“On this bumpy track, with several different surfaces, it’s easy to get a few scares that you don’t get on other circuits, but it’s the same for all the riders. So we all have to look for the best possible setup to beat the bumps in the best way possible. I think we have done a good job and we’re quite clear about the setup going into tomorrow. We just need to try out the odd thing in warm-up, but if it doesn’t work, we’ll go back to what we’ve got. We’re ready. We’ve got to be happy, because we’ve done a good job. Let’s see if tomorrow my shoulder doesn’t tire me out too much and if we can keep up the same pace throughout”.
