Marc Marquez showed his speed on Saturday in Portugal Moto GP qualifiers, setting a lap strong enough to challenge for pole position. Unfortunately, yellow flags saw the lap cancelled and he will line up ninth, one position ahead of Pol Espargaro for Sunday's Grand Prix.
The weather was once again a major player in the day's action in the Algarve as morning rain was replaced by a drying track and strong sun in the afternoon. Marc Marquez was comfortable in all conditions and looked set to put on a classic Marquez performance for pole in Q2, expertly navigating the still drying track. Moving to the top of the timesheets with a 1'42.295 as the session neared its end, the lap time would, unfortunately, be removed due to yellow flags on the track. As a result, the #93 will start from the ninth position on the grid with a best lap time of 1'43.575.
Free Practice 3 at the start of the day was again plagued with rain showers and saw just a handful of riders able to improve on their best overall times. Having done the heavy lifting on Friday, both Marc Marquez and Pol Espargaro were able to maintain their places in the combined top ten. Unfortunately, during the morning session, Marquez suffered a crash at Turn 8 but was unharmed. Both Marquez and Espargaro sat out the closing stages of the session as the weather worsened.
Espargaro was quickly able to get up to speed on the drying track in Q2 and post competitive times. Electing to stay out for the entire 15-minute session to better understand the conditions, the number 44 was pushing hard on his final lap to earn a spot in the top five but suffered a fall at the final corner when he hit a wet patch. Unharmed in the fall, Espargaro was left hugely frustrated with his final qualifying result of tenth place as both he and the team believed he had much more potential.
Alex Marquez took top Honda honours with a well-earned seventh place having led the majority of Q2 on his LCR Honda machine
Lining up in successive grid positions, the Honda Team pair will be looking to make the most of the fast-starting Honda RC213V to make up places early in the race. As Marquez showed last race in Austin, the potential is there to come through the field no matter what. Sunday's Portuguese Grand Prix is scheduled to start at 13:00 Local Time and will run over 25 laps.
"Today we were unlucky with the yellow flag, I was waiting until the last moments to push and do my fastest lap because I knew that the track would keep improving. But these things can happen, today it impacted my lap time but tomorrow it could affect another rider. The most important point is that the speed is there even if the result was not and we start ninth. Of course, it's not what we would like but it could be worse. Tomorrow in Warm-Up we need to understand the level and try to understand tyre choice, setup and a few other things. No one really knows who is fastest or what will happen in the dry, " said Honda rider Marc Marquez.
( With inputs from ANI )
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