On a strong Saturday, rookie Alex Marquez was able to continuously improve, challenge established race winners and set a new personal best in Misano.
Friday was a day of progress and potential for Alex Marquez and the Repsol Honda team. After improving his free practice 3 time by almost a full second compared to a week ago, his strongest session to date followed. Alex roared to seventh in FP4, finishing the session as the premier class leading rookie and leading Honda rider. With a best time of 1’32.382 in the session, Alex was only 0.377 seconds away from the front and showed a strong pace throughout the session.
The reigning Moto2 world champion was able to shorten his qualifying time to 1’32.198 – over a second faster than his 1’33.333 from the first quarter at the San Marino GP last week. The jump in time shows the steps that the 24-year-old takes in learning the MotoGP class. Alex will start the race in 17th place, ahead of multiple race winner Alex Rins.
The morning warm-up at 9:20 a.m. local time, Sunday, September 20, will be the last chance to adjust the setup of Alex’s Repsol Honda Team RC213V before the lights go out for the 2:00 p.m. race. After showing a consistently strong pace all weekend, Alex is aiming for a quick start to catch the group in front of him and fight with them.