Bridgestone: Marquez annihilates Aragon lap record to score eleventh pole of the season

Marc Marquez smashed the MotorLand Aragon Circuit Best Lap record by over half a second for his eleventh pole position of 2014, and helped to secure a Repsol Honda lockout of the front two grid slots at the Aragon Grand Prix.

Marquez set an extraordinary lap time of 1’47.187 on his final run in Qualifying Practice 2 to claim pole position ahead of teammate Dani Pedrosa, whose best time of 1’47.549 was 0.362 seconds adrift of the 2014 World Champion. Pramac Racing’s Andrea Iannone fully exploited the extra grip on offer from the soft compound rear slick to set the third-quickest qualifying lap time of 1’47.685 and claimed the final front row position for tomorrow’s race.

The Factory Honda’s are working well with the hard compound rear slick, Ducati and Yamaha prefer the medium compound rear...

Shinji Aoki

It was another cool morning at Aragon, yet prolonged sunny weather helped raise track temperatures to a peak of 38°C during QP2; the same peak figure as yesterday. In a similar situation to yesterday, all three asymmetric rear slick options; the soft, medium and hard compounds were evaluated today. The hard compound rear slick was preferred by most of the Factory Honda riders; the medium rear was the tyre of choice for the Ducati and Yamaha riders, while the soft rear was best suited to the majority of Open-class entrants.

For the front tyre, both the soft and medium compound slicks showed good potential during race simulations and qualifying, with the hard compound front slick remaining unused thus far this weekend. At this stage, race tyre choice is still open as the teams and riders will wait to see what the weather brings tomorrow, with cooler temperatures and even rain a possibility.

Sunday’s morning Warm Up session is scheduled for 0940 local time tomorrow morning (GMT +2), giving the riders one last chance to decide on their race tyre combination ahead of the twenty-three lap Aragon Grand Prix at 1400.

Shinji Aoki - Manager, Bridgestone Motorcycle Tyre Development Department: “Today’s weather conditions were almost a carbon copy of yesterday, so the riders were able to continue evaluating different slick tyre combinations and define their preferred race tyre combination. All three rear slick options we have at Aragon are likely to be utilised tomorrow. The Factory Honda’s are working well with the hard compound rear slick, Ducati and Yamaha prefer the medium compound rear, while some of the Open-class riders look set to use the soft compound rear slick tomorrow.

For the front tyre, only the soft and medium front slicks will be used for the race. This year’s Aragon tyre allocation is working extremely well as the balance between warm-up performance, grip and durability is allowing the riders to reach the limits of their bike securely, with the end result being that the top three riders today set qualifying times quicker than the old outright lap record.”

Bridgestone Motorsport