Marquez vs Dovi – advantage Marquez

Marc Marquez today extended his career pole count to 73 (45 in MotoGP), with his eighth pole of the season in Valencia, putting one hand and four fingers on the 2017 MotoGP crown in the process.

After showing quick race pace and taking P1 in both FP3 and FP4 sessions, Marc was the only rider able to dip under the 1'30 barrier in qualifying, setting a 1'29.897 that proved unbeatable by his opponents, even if the Spaniard suffered a crash in turn 4 during his second run, which prevented him from further improving on that time.

“I'm extremely happy that today we've achieved our goal of starting from the front row, as the start is very important at this track. I had a crash in qualifying that frustrated me for a bit, though only for a few minutes. The fact is that I did not feel totally comfortable with the front in turn 4 during my first flying lap, and when I told Santi (Hernández) before going out for my second run he told me to pay attention to this. I kept pushing because I knew that I had to do so if I wanted to be faster, but then I fell. “

“As I said on Thursday, the ‘Marquez style' will be okay until after the warm up, and that I want to work in the same way as always, pushing hard during the practices. The most important thing is that we've worked well all weekend and that we've got a good pace on used tires. For the race we must make a switch and change. We must see where Dovi is, where we can finish and do our best.”

Meanwhile his title rival Andrea Dovizioso, will need a miracle in Sunday's race if he dares to dream about taking the 2017 crown. The Ducati rider had a very lacklustre qualifying performance and will start all the way back in ninth place. If he thought it would be an uphill battle before this, it certain looks like the challenge is insurmountable now….

“Today wasn't a great qualifying session for me, and that was a real pity, but this afternoon we managed to improve our pace and we're not looking too bad for the race. I think that tomorrow we'll have a chance of fighting for the podium, but we know it's going to be tough as there are several riders who have good pace. Marquez is very fast, but there also were a lot of crashes and this means that even our rivals don't have much of a margin. We have to continue to work tomorrow morning in the warm-up and ride in a smoother and less aggressive way, but in the race we will try right until the very end!”