Spaniard Marc Marquez took pole position in a chaotic qualifying session for the Argentina MotoGP race, crashing out in the closing moments but keeping the top spot ahead of Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo.
After topping both yesterday practice sessions, Repsol Honda man Marquez always looked like the man to beat, and his opening Q2 salvo of 1m39.411s proved out of reach for his rivals for the rest of the session. The two-time champion, however, suffered a low-side crash at Turn 1 in the closing moments of the session in almost identical circumstances to his FP3 crash.
Marquez’s initial lap time gave him an advantage of 1.1s over Lorenzo at first, although this was halved when Rossi jumped to P2 late on with a time 0.577s slower.
During the final runs, Lorenzo briefly took second place, four hundredths up on Rossi, before the Italian snatched the place back from his factory Yamaha teammate by lapping 0.375s down on Marquez at the chequered flag.
That relegated Lorenzo back to third, ahead of the second factory Honda of Dani Pedrosa and the works Ducatis of Andrea Dovizioso and Andrea Iannone.
Maverick Vinales moved up to seventh at the end of the session on the best of the Suzukis, with Hector Barbera (Avintia Ducati) and Cal Crutchlow, who crashed his LCR Honda at Turn 1, completing the third row.
Bradley Smith was another man to lose the front at the first corner, and could do no better than 12th behind the Espargaro brothers Pol and Aleix, having previously topped Q1 from his Tech 3 teammate.
Scott Redding was the highest-profile casualty of the opening session, and will start 14th behind Loris Baz (Avintia Ducati) and ahead of Jack Miller, who crashed his Marc VDS Honda twice. The start of qualifying was delayed as Redding suffered a delamination of his rear tyre in FP4 in an incident not dissimilar to that of Baz in Sepang testing, albeit without a dramatic crash.
That brought out the red flags while the debris from the back of Redding’s Pramac Ducati was cleared, and the session was resumed before being suspended for a second time with four minutes to run to establish the circumstances of the failure.
FP4 was eventually resumed once again, with Lorenzo supplying some late drama when he suffered a routine low-side crash at Turn 1, the same place Marquez had fallen in FP3.
Qualifying times:
1. Marc Marquez (Repsol Honda) 1:39.411
2. Valentino Rossi (Movistar Yamaha) 1:39.786
3. Jorge Lorenzo (Movistar Yamaha) 1:39.944
4. Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda) 1:40.011
5. Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati) 1:40.198
6. Andrea Iannone (Ducati) 1:40.272
7. Maverick Vinales (Team Suzuki Ecstar) 1:40.375
8. Hector Barbera (Avintia Racing) 1:40.524
9. Cal Crutchlow (LCR Honda) 1:40.528
10. Pol Espargaro (Monster Yamaha Tech 3) 1:40.654