Dani Pedrosa yesterday snatched pole position in the dying seconds of a thrilling qualifying session for the Malaysian MotoGP, as world title hopeful Marc Marquez recovered from a crash to finish seventh.
Marquez looked on course to set the fastest pace of the weekend in a real fast lap when he fell off his Honda.
Pedrosa, the Spanish Honda rider, came out on top after a furious finale which saw five successive pole laps set in the last two minutes — leaving the top seven riders covered by less than half a second.
Photo: EPA
Pedrosa’s time of one minute, 59.212 seconds was 17-thousandths quicker than Yamaha’s Johann Zarco, with Andrea Dovizioso of Ducati another seven-thousandths behind to complete the front row.
Pedrosa at the trackside later said he was happy with his machine, adding that starting in the front was important to get a podium finish.
“We hope Sunday’s race will be dry. We hope to focus on the race and hopefully we will do our best,” he said.
“Starting from the front is very important,” he added.
It is Pedrosa’s third pole position of the season and he is fifth in the championship standing.
Pedrosa will aim for his second win of the season and first since Jerez in May.
“I made a couple of mistakes... but I am happy because it is my third pole of the season,” he said.
However, the Spaniard admitted that the sweltering heat would be the biggest challenge in today’s race.
“You will have to drink a lot. The sun is heating the helmet and the bike,” he said.
Dovizioso’s hopes of stopping Marquez clinching a second straight world title were buoyed when the Honda rider, who crashed at the end of one flying lap, finished outside the top six.
Dovizioso, riding a Ducati, said he was glad to start the race from the front ahead of Marquez, who sits in the third row.
“I set a fast lap and it seems the bike is competitive in both wet and dry track,” he said.
Dovizioso later told reporters that while he will be happy to win the second position in the world championship, he was determined to snatch the world title crown.
The Italian declined to reveal his strategy for the race, saying he did not know as weather conditions in Sepang are unpredictable.
“But we are happy to race. The bike has allowed me to push it. I riding in a good way. We are ready to fight,” he said.
Last year, Dovizioso won the race at Sepang International Circuit on a wet track.
If Marquez comes first or second, regardless of the result that Dovizioso achieves in Malaysia, he will win his fourth MotoGP title.
Spain’s Marquez leads Dovizioso by 33 points going into the year’s penultimate race, meaning he will be crowned world champion if he finishes first or second today.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier