Marquez: It's going to be a close race!

Marc Marquez is anticipating a ‘group’ race at Assen on Sunday after snatching pole on the Repsol Honda as the top 10 riders were covered by less than four tenths of a second.

In a dramatic Q2 session, Marquez came out on top by only 0.041s from LCR Honda’s Cal Crutchlow, who was a mere 0.059s ahead of Valentino Rossi - the top Yamaha rider as the Italian completed the front row line-up.

With nothing to choose at the top end of the leaderboard, Marquez is predicting an exciting race at the famous Dutch TT circuit.

“I think tomorrow will be a group race because here, it is quite a difficult circuit to lead all the laps and we will see during the day the weather and the amount of wind we have and all these things; we will try to choose the correct option with the tyres,” he said.

“The most important today was to try to concentrate like we did all weekend for the race pace and for the qualifying, with the new tyre I didn’t feel good but then when the tyre dropped is when I fell better.

“The most important thing is the race pace but anyway, here, the conditions changed a lot because this morning and especially this afternoon was so windy and then it was more difficult,” Marquez added.

“The bike was shaking and it was difficult to be constant but qualifying practice also was nice because you need to be fast but also smart to understand when you need to push, or the slipstreams especially.”

Marquez tried all three Michelin rear tyres throughout practice but he says he is yet to decide on his final choice for the race.

“Yesterday with the hard I was slower but it was also a different set-up of the bike, so we must understand because today we changed a lot the set-up and it was working much better and the pace was very similar between the hard, soft and medium,” he said.

“It will be difficult and tomorrow in the warm-up we have the last chance to try the tyres and then decide in the race.”