Marquez on pole for MotoGP opener

World Champion Marc Marquez will head the grid for Sunday’s first MotoGP™ race of the year at the Commercial Bank Grand Prix of Qatar with Alvaro Bautista and Bradley Smith also qualifying on the front row.

Despite only returning to riding his Repsol Honda machine on Thursday after breaking his leg in preseason training six weeks ago, Marquez showed his rivals he means business again in 2014 with a great charge to pole with a 1:54.507 lap.

The Spanish youngster found a big improvement in Free Practice 4 that allowed him to overcome the testing advantage of the Satellite and Open bikes. Fortunately his leg injury did not prove a major hindrance in the practice sessions.

Marquez posted his pole time on his seventh and last lap of the session, bumping down Bautista (GO&FUN Honda Gresini) to second and Smith (Monster Yamaha Tech 3) to third. His time was 0.200s faster than Jorge Lorenzo’s pole position time from 2013.

“I’m very happy, after the injury and the loss of half the preseason it’s very important to be here on the front row. But the pole position makes me happy. The satellite riders did a test here and I don’t think they’ve changed their bikes much since FP1, but step-by-step we’ve improved. There’s still some space to the perfect set up,” he commented.

“Tomorrow is the most important; it will be very hard as there are many riders on the same pace. Physical condition will also be difficult for me, as I don’t have full power in my leg so I have to use more arms and this is quite hard over long distance. I think it will be a great race for the fans.”

Bautista had provisional pole but eventually qualified second by a +0.057s margin, while Smith was also close to the top spot missing out by less than a tenth.

The Spanish rider was last on the front row at Brno in 2013 where he also secured second spot. Bautista had spent the majority of the weekend inside the top three, taking advantage of testing at the Losail circuit just 10 days prior.

“I’m really happy, for me it’s like a pole position. I just lost the pole position by a few thousandths of a second. But I usually suffer a lot at this track and now I can enjoy it and I’m feeling good on the bike,” he reflected.

“It’s important to start from the front row because you can see from practice that the rhythm of the other riders is very similar. A strong start and fighting for the top positions will be very important. In FP4 I did race distance with a full tank and a race tire and I had a good pace. I’m feeling comfortable with the tires for tomorrow.”

Smith’s result is his first ever premier class front row qualifying effort and was a great response to his FP3 horror crash. His best previous qualifying results in the premier class had been two sixth places, first at Assen and then another at Valencia in 2013.

For a few moments it even looked as though the English rider could claim his first pole position, but Bautista and Marquez ultimately pushed him down to third.

Smith reflected, “It definitely got off on the wrong foot yesterday by having the big crash. Luckily I got away with no injury and we turned up at the track today with the bike working really well. We were very confident in Free Practice 4.

“In the first run we strung two really solid laps together. In the second run me, (Aleix )Espargaro and Marc were playing a bit of cat and mouse. I didn’t want to risk anything as I felt the tires had already gotten cold, so I’m a bit disappointed I didn’t get a second go at it. But I’m pleased to hang onto third position and excited for tomorrow’s race. Getting a good start is going to be important, I feel really good with a full fuel tank so we’re looking forward to it.”

Another solid run for Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team) sees him head the second row, with Jorge Lorenzo (Movistar Yamaha MotoGP) and Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda Team) managing to pull something out of the bag in fifth and sixth respectively having struggled for much of the weekend so far.

Stefan Bradl (LCR Honda MotoGP) leads the third row with a time just 0.364s off the pace, with Q1 participant Cal Crutchlow (Ducati Team) improving to eighth.

A disastrous session for Aleix Espargaro (NGM Forward Racing) saw him qualify ninth, having walked away from two crashes, appearing to crack under the pressure of Q2. He had led the way earlier in the weekend and was furious with himself after both falls.

Valentino Rossi (Movistar Yamaha MotoGP) starts in the unfamiliar territory of row four, ahead of Andrea Iannone (Pramac Racing) and Pol Espargaro (Monster Yamaha Tech3).

The Moto2™ qualifying session at the Commercial Bank Grand Prix of Qatar saw Esteve Rabat (Marc VDS Racing Team) take pole, ahead of Sandro Cortese (Dynavolt Intact GP) and Takaaki Nakagami (IDEMITSU Honda Team Asia).

Rabat took pole with a best time of 2:00.081 to beat the existing pole record, with Cortese just behind him by 0.02s in second. Cortese later crashed in an incident also involving Jordi Torres (Mapfre Aspar Team Moto2) and Mika Kallio (Marc VDS Racing Team) causing a red flag, but each escaped relatively unscathed.

Nakagami (+0.37s) rounded out the front row, with Thomas Luthi (Interwetten Paddock Moto2), impressive rookie Sam Lowes (Speed Up) and Kallio on row two.

The Moto3™ qualifying session saw Alex Rins secure pole position for the first race of 2014, with his Estrella Galicia 0,0 teammate Alex Marquez and Jack Miller (Red Bull KTM Ajo) joining him on the front row of the grid.

The rider who missed out on the title in the last race of 2013, Rins showed his intentions for this season by posting the fastest ever Moto3 lap of Losail, taking the top spot with a 2:05.973 at the end of the session.

–From motogp.com

MotoGP Qualifying Results (courtesy Repsol Honda)

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