Marquez takes fourth consecutive pole in Argentina
Marc Marquez achieved another milestone in his career today, taking his fourth consecutive Argentinian pole position (out of four visits to the Termas de Rio Hondo Circuit), his 38th in MotoGP, and the 66th of his career, setting a new record across all classes of the Championship, at only 24 years of age.
Marc was the only rider who was able to get into the 1’47” range in the wet conditions that affected the qualifying session.
Dani Pedrosa also made the best of a tricky situation after a morning drizzle prevented him from getting a top 10 result in FP3. Forced to participate in QP1, he set the fastest lap in that wet session to join his teammate in the fight for the top positions, ultimately qualifying on the second row with the fifth-fastest lap time.
Weather forecasts indicate dry conditions for tomorrow’s MotoGP race, which will get underway at 4 p.m. local time
Pull&Bear Aspar team adds:
The Grand Prix of Argentina is set for its fourth edition tomorrow at the Autódromo de Termas del Río Hondo and for the fourth time it will be Marc Márquez who starts from pole position. The Spaniard produced a masterclass in wet conditions this afternoon to leave his closest rival trailing by some seven tenths of a second. That man is Pull&Bear Aspar rider Karel Abraham, who produced a stunning performance to clock a 1’48.275, narrowly holding off fellow front row starter Cal Crutchlow by 0.003 seconds to secure second place on the grid.
With the majority of factory riders missing out on Q2, Abraham made the most of his opportunity to record his best ever MotoGP qualifying result (his previous best was sixth at the British GP in 2011 when just sixteen riders started) and the best ever grid position for the Pull&Bear Aspar Team in this category.
His team-mate Álvaro Bautista had also qualified directly for Q2 thanks to his fifth best time in free practice but he wasn’t quite able to match his dry performance in the wet and will start from tenth. The Spaniard is hoping that the weather improves for tomorrow so that he can return to the sharp end of the field in the race.
2nd Karel Abraham 1:48.275 (7 laps): “”This feels amazing, it feels just great. The conditions today have been really bad since this morning but I really enjoyed qualifying. I love this circuit, which helped, and yesterday we made a strong start. I knew it would be difficult for us to prove that we could stay at the top today and tomorrow it will be even harder but our targets have not changed. We know what we want and what we need to achieve and we will work for that. This result puts us at a great advantage for tomorrow’s race.”
