Austrian Grand Prix Red Bull Ring MotoGP Q2: A pole position by 2 thousandths of a second!

 To Andrea Dovizioso, Jorge Lorenzo, Danilo Petrucci, Marc Márquez, Andrea Iannone, Dani Pedrosa, Cal Crutchlow, Tito Rabat, Johann Zarco and Maverick Vinales already pre-qualified since FP1, have just been added Alvaro Bautista and Alex Rins, drafted in Q1, to determine the composition of the first 4 rows of the starting grid for this Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring.

This is not the case Valentino Rossi who will start 14th on the grid.

The conditions are ideal for this clash of the Titans between the official Ducatis and Marc Marquez, with the surface now completely dry, 22° in the air and 32° on the track.

Here are the time references available before this 2-minute Q15:

Red Bull Ring MotoGP	2017	2018
FP1	1'24.631 Hector Barbera (See here)	1'23.830 Andrea Dovizioso (See here)
FP2	1'24.046 Andrea Dovizioso (See here)	1'33.995 Marc Marquez (See here)
FP3	1'23.459 Marc Marquez (See here)	1'26.496 Marc Marquez (See here)
FP4	1'24.180 Marc Marquez (See here)	1'24.139 Marc Marquez (See here)
Qualification 1	1'23.754 Danilo Petrucci (See here)	1'24.195 Alvaro Bautista (See here)
Qualification 2	1'23.235 Marc Marquez (See here)	1'23.241 Marc Marquez
Warm Up	1'23.979 Andrea Dovizioso (See here)
Course	Dovizioso, Marquez, Pedrosa (See here)
All time lap record	1'23.142 Andrea Iannone 2016

From the start of the session, Andrea Dovizioso stands out by mounting a medium rear tire on his Ducati.

Jorge Lorenzo left first and trains from a distance Marc Márquez. After the first flying lap, the latter was the fastest in 1'23.810.

On the next pass, the Honda driver improved to 1'23.511, ahead Andrea Dovizioso first to 1/2 second, before reducing his gap to 3 hundredths.

Behind, mid-session, we find John Zarco author of a very good performance aboard his Yamaha from the Tech3 team.

Jorge Lorenzo then 8th, jumped to pole position, in 1'23.415, but Marc Márquez replies in 1'23.395.

With 2 sessions contested in the rain, the drivers have enough tires to make 3 attempts. They don’t deprive themselves of it…

4 minutes from the checkered flag, Marc Márquez achieves 1'23.241, almost the same time as his pole position last year.

In the last minute, 3 of them improved their first sector: Marc Marquez, Jorge Lorenzo and Andrea Dovizioso.

Finally, Marc Márquez maintains an advantage of 2/1000 of a second over Andrea Dovizioso !

Long live tomorrow!

Red Bull Ring MotoGP Q2 Austrian Grand Prix standings: 

Photo credits and classification: MotoGP.com