Red Bull Ring MotoGP: Marquez surpasses Doohan with 59th pole

Marquez’s 59th MotoGP pole also came with a new lap record, as he surpassed Andrea Iannone’s previous benchmark from 2016.

Yamaha rider Maverick Viñales took the unusual step of doing his first run with the medium rear tyre, and led after the opening series of flyers, improving by three tenths on his second attempt to end up on 1m23.628s.

Yet Marquez overtook Vinales almost right away with a 1m23.359s, retaining a quarter-second lead as the 15-minute Q2 session passed its halfway point.

By that point Vinales had switched to a soft rear, and after a few attempts he whittled Marquez’s lead down to 0.164s. However, the championship leader responded immediately once more, setting a new track record with a 1m23.027s.

Marquez was unable to improve on his two final laps, but his pole came under no threat, with nearest rival Fabio Quartararo (Petronas Yamaha) coming up 0.434s short at the chequered flag.

Quartararo’s late improvement relegated Andrea Dovizioso into third, the Ducati rider having surpassed Vinales by just 0.008s for what turned out to be the final place on the front row.

Two riders on year-old machinery – Pramac Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia and LCR Honda’s Takaaki Nakagami – made up the top six, both recording their best-ever qualifying results in MotoGP.

Bagnaia had come through Q1 alongside LCR Honda’s Cal Crutchlow, who will line up ninth, joining Suzuki’s Alex Rins and Bagnaia’s Pramac teammate Jack Miller on the third row.

Like Vinales, Valentino Rossi ran the medium tyre early in Q2, but the Italian ended up only 10th, ahead of KTM’s Pol Espargaro and Ducati’s Danilo Petrucci.

Petrucci crashed at Turn 4 and completed a Q2 order split by just 0.937s.

Q1: Oliveira just misses out

Tech 3 KTM rider Miguel Oliveira sat at the top of the Q1 timesheets when the chequered flag flew in the opening segments, but last-gasp improvements from Crutchlow and Bagnaia denied him a spot in the pole shoot-out.

Behind Oliveira, Petronas rider Franco Morbidelli was the sole Yamaha out of Q2 in 14th, while Tito Rabat came close to his best qualifying result of the year by taking 15th, 0.003s up on the second works KTM of Johann Zarco.

Former lap record holder Iannone will be the top Aprilia rider on the grid in 18th, having beaten teammate Aleix Espargaro in qualifying for the first time this season.

Honda test rider Stefan Bradl, standing in for the injured Jorge Lorenzo at the Repsol outfit this weekend, will make up the order in 21st.

Starting grid

Cla	#	Rider	Bike	Time	Gap	km/h
1	93	Marc Marquez	Honda	1'23.027		187.572
2	20	Fabio Quartararo	Yamaha	1'23.461	0.434	186.597
3	4	Andrea Dovizioso	Ducati	1'23.515	0.488	186.476
4	12	Maverick Viñales	Yamaha	1'23.523	0.496	186.458
5	63	Francesco Bagnaia	Ducati	1'23.652	0.625	186.171
6	30	Takaaki Nakagami	Honda	1'23.669	0.642	186.133
7	42	Alex Rins	Suzuki	1'23.681	0.654	186.106
8	43	Jack Miller	Ducati	1'23.688	0.661	186.091
9	35	Cal Crutchlow	Honda	1'23.754	0.727	185.944
10	46	Valentino Rossi	Yamaha	1'23.817	0.790	185.804
11	44	Pol Espargaro	KTM	1'23.866	0.839	185.696
12	9	Danilo Petrucci	Ducati	1'23.964	0.937	185.479
13	88	Miguel Oliveira	KTM	1'24.130	1.103	185.113
14	21	Franco Morbidelli	Yamaha	1'24.270	1.243	184.805
15	53	Tito Rabat	Ducati	1'24.389	1.362	184.545
16	5	Johann Zarco	KTM	1'24.392	1.365	184.538
17	17	Karel Abraham	Ducati	1'24.423	1.396	184.471
18	29	Andrea Iannone	Aprilia	1'24.526	1.499	184.246
19	41	Aleix Espargaro	Aprilia	1'24.749	1.722	183.761
20	55	Hafizh Syahrin	KTM	1'24.759	1.732	183.739
21	6	Stefan Bradl	Honda	1'25.020	1.993	183.175
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