Pole position Marquez at Aragon in MotoGP

Marquez grabs another pole

Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa battled against each other to claim pole position at the Gran Premio Movistar de Aragon, with Marquez coming out on top.

The Repsol Honda pair had a clear advantage over the Yamaha machines for much of the weekend, but the Ducatis of Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team) and Andrea Iannone (Pramac Racing) had been challenging for the front.

Q2 saw Marquez break his own lap record on just his first flying lap, putting him comfortably ahead of the rest of the field. Marquez himself thought that this time would be enough, but teammate Pedrosa produced an incredible lap time to take provisional pole.

The riders came in for their second set of tires and Marquez quickly returned to track, pushing hard to produce another record breaking lap of 1'47.187s – this set him 0.362s clear of teammate Pedrosa.

Dovizioso had been on a quick lap when he crashed his Ducati GP14.2, allowing Pedrosa to take the second spot on the grid ahead of Iannone with a 1'47.549s lap time, also under the previous lap record.

"Qualifying went very well, continuing the form that we have had so far this weekend! We have focused a lot of our work on our race pace, looking less at setting a one-off lap time and more at finding a strong pace," said Marquez.

He added, "It has given me good confidence but the weather looks unstable and the tire choice will be tough. The choice of tires is a little harder when it's cold. The temperature today was perfect, hopefully it's a dry race tomorrow as it's better for the fans."

Pedrosa commented, "Today we had a good qualifying session. In other races we have had difficulties because we haven't started from the front, but today we managed to set a good lap. I think that the practice sessions also went well for us, and tomorrow in the race we will be as competitive as possible."

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