Marc Marquez qualified just 0.152 seconds off of the front row at the Italian GP today while teammate Dani Pedrosa missed the second row by a mere 32 thousandths of a second during a hard-fought qualifying session at Mugello, where the track temperature rose above 45° C.

As the setup that Marc and his crew had found in the morning session hadn’t proven equally good in the much warmer afternoon FP4, Marc and his crew made a few modifications to the settings of their Repsol Honda RC213V, enabling him to lap under the 1’47” barrier on his first flying lap in qualifying. On his second try, only a small mistake toward the end of his lap prevented him from making the front row, for the first time since the 2015 Catalan GP.

Dani was also improving upon his seventh-fastest time in the final minutes of the session but ultimately lost a little in the last sector and barely missed out on a second-row start.

Marc Marquez - 4th 1'46.759

“I’m happy with how the day went. This morning I felt very comfortable, but in the second free-practice session of the day, the temperature rose and the setup we had didn’t work the same. It’s something that has already happened to us at other circuits this season, because our bike is quite sensitive to changes in temperature or the condition of the asphalt. We reacted in time and in the qualifying session we changed the setup, which worked out better. It’s a shame that on the last lap I made a mistake when I was improving my time, so tomorrow I’ll try to have a very good race in order to finish on the podium. It won’t be easy.”

Dani Pedrosa - 7th 1'47.218

“We were able to improve the result compared to Le Mans, which is important and was our goal for qualifying today. We need to carry this over into the race; tomorrow it will be important to start well and be strong in the early laps. We’ll try to move up some positions and maintain a good pace. I hope to make the most of the position we achieved today as I believe my race pace should be not too bad.”