Marquez qualifying battle like Moto3 vs MotoGP

Honda rider Marquez stormed to his 58th career premier-class pole by 2.5 seconds after being the first to gamble on slick tires on the drying track.

Quartararo eventually joined Marquez in ditching the wet tyres, but was unable to advance on 10th – his worst qualifying result since the French Grand Prix.

The Petronas SRT rider says he was at a loss at how quick Marquez was straight away in Q2, and admits he felt like a “rookie” in the conditions.

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When asked how he found qualifying, he said: “Really difficult. It was like I was on a Moto3 [bike] and hey [Marquez] was on a MotoGP [bike].

“So I was on my out lap and really I couldn’t get the feeling. Petrucci was in front of me and was exactly the same.

“I was catching him a little bit in braking, he was pulling away a little bit on the corners, but in the end we stay together and when Marc overtook us, I didn’t know he could go so fast in these conditions.

“He has a lot of experience for sure, but it’s a day like today that we feel that we are rookies and we need more experience.”

Quartararo continued to heap praise on Marquez, adding: “When you are braking into the corners and you want to go fast, the bike is not turning – it goes straight.

“So when I saw Marc going really fast in these kinds of corners, I was like ‘whoa, he is really impressive’, and you see why he is a seven-time world champion [across all classes].”

Saturday’s weather-affected sessions meant no race preparation could be done ahead of what is forecast to be a dry race, with Quartararo missing out on a chance to test the softer tires to try and emulate a fast run on that compound works Yamaha counterpart Maverick Vinales did on Friday in FP2.

“Normally today we would try a lot of things: tires, settings, electronics,” he said.

“Really, we didn’t get anything. So tomorrow morning we will have a lot of things to try, a tire to choose.

“So will be tough tomorrow we know, but I’m feeling good to fight for a good race.

“Unfortunately 20 [minutes in warm-up] want to be really short [to test anything]. 20 minutes here is less than 10 laps.

“So will be really not easy to make conclusions after the warm-up. But we will make something, we will try to get the best with a little bit of luck tomorrow.”