Mighty 80th career pole for Marquez at rainy Sepang, but he’ll start from third row

Márquez was second in FP3 and topped the timesheets in FP4.

In Q2, the MotoGp World Champion got into first on his opening lap and improved his time on his second attempt, to take his seventh pole of the season and 80th overall.

He suffered a crash at Turn 4 on his fourth lap, going back to the pits to collect his second bike.

Márquez has been sanctioned with a six-place penalty and will start tomorrow’s race from seventh place.

Dani Pedrosa took a step forward in the dry and placed fourth in FP3, as well as ninth in FP4. In Q2 he set the tenth fastest time, for a spot on the fourth row.

MotoGP

4 months ago

2018 Malaysian GP Qualifying – Marc Márquez & Dani Pedrosa’s statements

#MM93

I think that being able to quickly adapt to sudden changes in track conditions is one of my strong points. Today I took advantage of that, even if, honestly, it wasn’t easy. It was the first time this weekend we rode in the wet, and we even crashed. But the feeling was there and we achieved the pole position, which is a good feeling even if we’ll ultimately start from the third row.

The most important thing is that we made a huge step forward with the setup in dry conditions, and now I think we’re competitive. I also adapted my riding style a bit, and now we’re closer to the faster guys, who here are Dovizioso and Viñales. Now we’ll see which conditions we’ll have tomorrow, then we’ll try and make a good start and if possible we’ll fight for the podium.

#DP26

Today we made a little step forward in the dry but still not enough to stay in the group that can fight for the victory. Then I struggled a lot in the wet, with both medium and soft spec tyres. I couldn’t find any grip, and that means that tomorrow we’ll again start from back on the grid, which of course isn’t good. We’ll see what the conditions are at race time and do what we can from the start.