Lorenzo seals pole position while Marquez settles for P1

Le Mans (France), 7 May 2016: After keeping up the pace in Saturday‘s two free practice sessions on the second day in France, Movistar Yamaha MotoGP’s Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi went straight through to the Q2 session to qualify on the first and third row for tomorrow’s fifth race of the 2016 MotoGP World Championship.

Marquez of Repsol Honda qualified second while teammate Dani Pedrosa had to settle for 11th place.

Lorenzo had his signature start to the qualifying session, waiting for all other riders to leave the pit lane before rushing out on hisYZR-M1. Having set a 1‘32s lap this weekend, the Mallorcan continued the trend dropping a 1‘32.437s, a best lap of the weekend at that time, for first place. He further extended his lead with a 1‘32.236s before heading back to the pits with more than seven minutes remaining.

There were mixed feelings for Repsol Honda today at Le Mans, with Marc Marquez emerging second-best from a demanding qualifying session and Dani Pedrosa forced to settle for 11th place after slipping off at turn 4 halfway through the session.

Marquez had found quite a good pace in the morning FP3 session, and he struggled to match that speed in his first run in qualifying. However, the Spaniard put in a couple of very fast laps during his second exit and finished in a strong second position behind pole-man Jorge Lorenzo.

Pedrosa was unfortunate to suffer a small crash after completing his first flying lap and so losing precious time and the chance to improve his lap time enough to do better than 11th.

Lorenzo was back on track with five minutes to go and had just enough time left for two more hot laps. Despite a slight error on his third hot lap, he made a stunning recovery. He waited until the last moment to show his blistering pace and became the fastest man everaround the Le Mans Bugatti circuit, posting a new circuit best lap record of 1’31.975s, extending his lead to 0.441s.

Valentino Rossi had a similar strategy to his teammate and was one of the last riders to exit pit lane as the lights went green. His first flying lap put him in third place until Lorenzo completed his first flying lap, pushing the Italian back to fourth. Eager to stay on the first row, he improved his time on his second try and moved back into the provisional top three with a 1‘32.829s.

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