Australian young gun Jack Miller is well placed to extend his Moto3 world championship lead after securing pole position at the Spanish motorcycle grand prix meeting.
Townsville teenager Miller claimed his third pole spot from the opening four rounds of the season as he clocked 1min 46.173sec at Jerez on Saturday to finish over half a second ahead of Italy’s Niccolo Antonelli and Spaniard Alex Rins.
Having won in Doha and Austin, Texas in the opening two races, Miller, riding a KTM, was third in Argentina last time out as Romano Fenati moved into second place in the overall standings.
However, he will be confident of extending his 17-point lead on Sunday as Fenati qualified down in 10th and Efren Vazquez, currently third in the title race, also starts on the third row of the grid in seventh.
Meanwhile defending world champion Marc Marquez continued his MotoGP domination on Saturday to secure his fourth straight pole.
The Spaniard’s time of 1min 38.120sec broke compatriot Jorge Lorenzo’s previous qualifying record from 2008 by 0.069 of a second and relegated the Yamaha star to second place on the grid.
Marquez has a commanding lead in the championship standings having won all three races so far this season in Qatar, the United States and Argentina.
And the 21-year-old thanked his team for a new strategy using three different sets of tyres for helping him keep his run going.
“We used a new strategy and on the last run the tyres worked very well,” he said.
“We are performing at a good level and we are prepared to fight for the win, although I think here everything will be tighter and we will need to really push ourselves. It will be a great race.”
Despite losing out on pole and another record to Marquez, Lorenzo was also happy to be moving in the right direction after having to retire from the season-opener Qatar and finishing 10th in the Grand Prix of the Americas in Austin last month.
“I am happy, we managed to register some good times and I am comfortable on the bike.
“Second place is good for tomorrow because we are more or less where we were in Argentina and possibly even a bit better.”
Last year’s winner in Jerez, Dani Pedrosa, was third fastest and admitted that his Honda teammate Marquez was too good.
