Marc Marquez “exaggerated too much, trying to be too fast”

Marc Marquez on pole position for the Aragon MotoGP wasn’t a surprise, as the 2024 double winner continued his domination of this year’s event.

But after blasting to the top on his first flying lap of Qualifying 2, the Ducati Lenovo star ‘exaggerated’ too much at the start of his second run.

After backing out of the lap, Marquez suddenly found himself pushed to third - on the dirty side of the grid - by Alex Marquez and Franco Morbidelli.

The eight-time world champion’s next lap restored order but was also far from perfect, his GP25 getting out of shape on the way to a narrow 0.260s advantage over younger brother Alex.

“The first lap on with the first tyre was clean, even if I just did one lap and then I stopped because, already it was a ‘45.9,” Marc said.

“But then I exaggerated too much, trying to be too fast, and I even lose time.

“Of course, the riding style for the main race and the sprint race is different. But yeah, that [pole] lap was not the smoothest of my life! But let’s see if we can keep going.”

Alex, also Marc’s closest title rival, bounced back from a crash in final practice that left him with only one GP24 machine for qualifying.

“To understand the crash was quite easy,” he said in parc ferme. “I went too fast at that point for the number of laps that the tyres had. I was just a little bit too optimistic to go into that corner with that speed and I lost the front.

“The mechanics are not here [in parc ferme] because they are in the garage already working with the bike because it was quite damaged.

“But later on, I did a reset [before qualifying]. The goal was to be in the front row, and on the right or in the middle of the grid.

“I’m happy to be on the front row. We know that Marc is faster than us here but we're closer compared to yesterday.

“So we'll try to do our maximum and to minimise the points difference.”

Marc starts the Aragon Sprint with a 24-point MotoGP title lead over Alex.