Marquez crashes, teammate takes pole

SEPANG(MALAYSIA): Marc Marquez, the defending world champion, who is on the verge of sealing his fourth Motogp title, had a disastrous qualifying session at the Malaysian Grand Prix.

The 24-year-old crashed his Repsol Honda in his first flying lap of the session on Saturday, and was forced to use his spare bike, which just magnified the discomfort he was enduring.

Despite being fastest during Free Practice 4, Marquez had to wrestle his bike to qualify in seventh place, the second-worst qualifying result of his Motogp career and the worst of the year. Pole was taken by Dani Pedrosa, which should leave Marquez a little happy as his main title rival — Andrea Dovizioso of Ducati — is starting behind his Honda teammate. Pedrosa qualified with a time of 1 minute, 59.212 seconds, just 0.017 seconds faster than Italian Johann Zarco (Yamaha), with Dovizioso (another 0.007 behind on Ducati) completing the front row.

Yamaha’s Italian riders Valentino Rossi and Maverick Vinales, and Jorge Lorenzo of Spain (in that order) will start the race from the second row of the grid. The pedigree of the riders makes Marquez task to race up the order that much difficult.

Despite things looking tough, Marquez still holds the aces, leading Dovizioso by 33 points in the championship. He will be crowned world champion if he finishes first or second in Sunday’s race.