Marquez flies to pole position at Silverstone

Championship leader Marc Marquez set an incredible lap time of 2’00.691 to clinch pole position for Sunday’s Hertz British Grand Prix.

The Repsol Honda Team rider went head-to-head with reigning World Champion Jorge Lorenzo, who will start second from Cal Crutchlow despite two earlier crashes for the Englishman.

For 2013, the British round of the championship has been moved from a June date to this August-September weekend. Amid bright sunshine in the English countryside, lap times dropped dramatically courtesy of warmer afternoon temperatures.

Marquez’s remarkable effort sees the Spaniard clinch his fifth pole of the season and third in five Grand Prix weekends, beating Lorenzo (Yamaha Factory Racing) by just over one tenth of a second while third-placed Crutchlow (Monster Yamaha Tech3) was a further six tenths in arrears; however this came after two separate crashes for Crutchlow during third practice this morning. The top five was completed by LCR Honda MotoGP’s Stefan Bradl and Marquez’s teammate Dani Pedrosa, who was the final rider within one second of the pole position time - a new qualifying record.

Second Yamaha Factory Racing rider Valentino Rossi will complete Row 2 in sixth position, while the third row will consist of Ducati Team duo Andrea Dovizioso and Nicky Hayden who sandwich GO&FUN Honda Gresini’s Alvaro Bautista in seventh, eighth and ninth places. The top ten was completed by Tech3’s Bradley Smith, while NGM Mobile Forward Racing’s Colin Edwards appeared in Q2 for the third successive event and achieves his best qualifying result of the year so far in 11th. CRT counterpart Aleix Espargaro was absent from Q2 following a crash in final practice; having injured his neck and the fourth finger of his left hand, the Power Electronics Aspar rider’s race participation will now be subject to a Sunday medical check-up.

Espargaro’s teammate Randy de Puniet missed out on Q2 by just six thousandths of a second and is therefore set to line up 13th, while Avintia Blusens’ Hector Barbera also improved at the end of Q1 and will be 14th on the grid. Britain’s Michael Laverty, who like compatriot Crutchlow crashed in morning practice, has qualified 19th for PBM while Australian Bryan Staring completes the grid on the Gresini CRT machine. Cardion AB Motoracing’s Karel Abraham is not at Silverstone, having elected to skip the race in order to recover from injuries picked up in an Indianapolis crash.

The 2013 Hertz British Grand Prix begins at 1pm local time (GMT +1) on Sunday, coming after the Moto2™ race but before Moto3™, as was also the case at Brno.