Repsol Honda Team dominated the Qualifying session at COTA with Marc Marquez pacing the opposition one more time. America has been good to the Spaniard who is after his 4th win at the Austin Track and has dominated the practice sessions and set a pole time of 2’03.188 on the new Michelin rubber. In the practice sessions, Yamaha did not seem to have the pace to challenge Marquez, but a 2’03.257 was a solid response from Lorenzo who wants to reset his championship hopes after his fall in Argentina. Rossi qualified third with a 2’03.644 but looked really relaxed and pointed out that the tire choice to go the distance come race day will define the outcome of the race. Riders have to select their tire compounds and this might turn out to be a disaster of mean the win for any of them.
Andrea Iannone from the Ducat Team was the only other rider to go below the 2’04 frontier with a 2’03.913 but the Italian does have a penalty of 3 places on the grid which will see him launch 7th behind his teammate who starts 6th with a 2’04.339. Maverick Viñales will start 4th in the Suzuki and Cal Crutchlow will start 5th with the LCR Honda.
Dani Pedrosa has not been able to match the pace of the front runners, he got a third place finish in Argentina after coming back from a terrible start when he was forced out at turn one by a Ducati and ended up in 15th spot, benefited in the end by the falls of Lorenzo, Viñales and both Ducatis. He will start in P8 a little over a second off the pace ahead of the 2nd Suzuki of Aleix Espargaro who moved from Qualification 1 to the lead group and managed to find better pace towards this second session.
Scott Redding, Bradley Smith and Loris Baz complete the top 12.
