Marquez surprised by margin of record pole position
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Marc Marquez says even he was surprised charging to a record 59th career pole position by a comfortable margin over his MotoGP rivals at the Red Bull Ring but concedes his advantage won’t be so dominant over a race distance.The Repsol Honda rider has claimed the outright pole position record in MotoGP, having equalled Mick Doohan’s 58 poles seven days ago in Brno, with a new lap record at the Spielberg circuit of 1m 23.027s – taking pole by 0.434s from nearest rival Fabio Quartararo.While his pole position advantage didn’t quite match the staggering 2.5s gap he produced last weekend in the Czech Republic, Marquez admits he didn’t expect to have such a comfortable margin at the Red Bull Ring but felt the hot and greasy conditions played to his favour.“When I saw the gap I was surprised because I expected that everybody would be a little bit faster or closer,” Marquez said. “But the track was very slippery in FP4 and qualifying. Especially in qualifying when it is slippery it is one of my strong points.“I am able to stop the bike by sliding with both wheels and then I can brake later than the others sometimes. At this circuit it is working well but at others where it is more flowing then I cannot use that advantage. You can use that style for one, two or three laps.“The rest, the race pace, is not four-tenths, he is much closer and he is there so we need to work hard and understand the race pace well to pick the best tyre for the race to try to finish in front of them.“Already in FP4 I saw that maybe it was possible to do a 1m 22s but in the end it was a 1m 23.0s. It is a good lap and the most important thing is that we feel good on the bike and the confidence is really high.”Despite his sky-high confidence off the back of finishing either first or second in every race he has finished this season, Marquez remains focused on maximising his points haul at the Red Bull Ring as he picked out Ducati’s Andrea Dovizioso and the Yamaha duo of Quartararo and Maverick Vinales as his biggest challengers.“We have done the correct steps at the moment but tomorrow is the most important day and the guy to my left (Dovizioso) is not far away,” he said. “He is consistent, especially with a used tyre, and he has a good pace.“We cannot forget about both Yamaha riders either, Vinales and Quartararo, so it looks like it will be interesting. It looks like the temperature is dropping and like every Sunday for the race it will be most important to choose the rear tyre.”
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