Marc Marquez stormed to his fifth successive pole at the Circuit of the Americas in a thrilling shootout with Maverick Vinales, but admits he did not expect to do so having struggled with his RC213V throughout practice.
Marquez suffered a confidence-bashing third free practice on Saturday morning, the Spaniard crashing twice in the cooler conditions. As a result, he was unable to improve on his Friday lap time, and headed into qualifying still looking for performance on fresh rubber.
Twitter: 2nd crash of the session for #MM93! A nasty one as well… fortunately #RiderOK
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Despite not feeling totally comfortable over one lap, Marquez was determined to keep his Austin qualifying record intact and threw caution to the wind, digging deep to go top of the pile on his first flying lap with the best time of the weekend.
He raised the benchmark on his second tour, though this was surpassed by Vinales. On his final attempt, Marquez produced a 2m02.741s to go just over a tenth clear of the field for his 67th career pole.
“This pole makes me feel really good, because I honestly didn’t expect it, or actually I though it would be difficult,” he explained.
“In fact, even considering that this circuit suits my riding style, I’ve been struggling a bit this weekend. We knew our opponents were very strong on new tyres and we worked a lot on race distance, and I felt better on race pace than on qualifying pace.
“But anyway, this is a track I love, so I told myself, ‘let’s try’ and on my last lap I pushed to my maximum, doing my best, and we got another pole here in Austin which is very good.”
Many riders have cited the closing stages of tomorrow’s race as being crucial, with CoTA notoriously difficult on tyres. This is something Marquez is aware of and spent the fourth free practice session working on used rubber.
The Honda rider is happy with his pace on worn tyres, and is feeling confident on his RC213V ahead of the 21-lap grand prix after a tricky start on Friday getting his bike to absorb CoTA’s harsh bumps.
“I’m happy with the team; we changed many things on the bike over the weekend and step-by-step we regained some confidence,” he added.
“This afternoon we just focused on keeping a good pace and it worked well. We did a good job in FP4, I feel quite good on used tyres so we’ll see what we can do tomorrow.”
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