Austin, Texas: Marc Marquez earned seventh consecutive pole in Texas as Jorge Lorenzo secured 11th place start on Sunday.
“I’m happy to be on pole position but for tomorrow nothing is certain yet. Today we were fastest and got pole, but no one knows about race pace or tyres yet as we lost FP3. We will have to work well in Warm Up to make up for the time we sadly lost to the weather. After Warm Up we will know more but there are many people who could be in the fight,” said Marc Marquez.
Torrential morning rain and threats of severe lightning storms in Austin, Texas led to the cancellation of all Free Practice 3 sessions at the Circuit of the Americas.
Fortunately conditions improved and the Repsol Honda Team were able to join the MotoGP field for Free Practice 4 as scheduled.
The FP4 session did allow riders to briefly test slicks on the drying track before heading into qualifying.
With the track more or less completely dry, Marc Marquez continued his perfect run of form on Texan soil to secure a seventh straight pole position.
His lap of 2’03.787 put Marquez over a quarter of a second clear of second placed Rossi. While there are still areas to improve, the seven-time champion is feeling confident for tomorrow’s race.
Jorge Lorenzo took full advantage of the constantly improving conditions to advance through Q1 as the fastest rider.
A technical issue halted Lorenzo’s first run in Q2 but he was able to return to track with five minutes remaining. Despite this, Lorenzo will line up 11th on the grid with the aim of fighting inside the top ten.
LCR Honda’s Cal Crutchlow completed the front row in third place.
?A challenging day today with the weather where we unfortunately lost some time. I was feeling strong in Q1 and pushed hard to get through then we had an issue in Q2 which upset our plan.
The other bike had a different setting as we are trying a lot of different things so we couldn’t unlock our full potential. Tomorrow will be a physical race, it always is here,’’ said Jorge Lorenzo. (UNI)
