Thursday 21 August 2014 14:28, UK
Marc Marquez continued his qualifying dominance with a ninth pole position of the season at the Czech Grand Prix in Brno.
The Spaniard, riding for Repsol Honda, produced a flying lap of one minute, 55.585 seconds to top the time-sheets ahead of Andrea Dovizioso on his Ducati.
Dovizioso took second behind Marquez at Indianapolis last time and continued his fine form to chase him home again with fellow Ducati rider Andrea Iannone - the Italian is on the front-row for the second time this season.
Britain's Yamaha rider Bradley Smith took the fourth spot and will start from row two together with two Spaniards, Dani Pedrosa on a Honda and Jorge Lorenzo on a Yamaha.
Valentino Rossi suffered a crash in free practice four and injured his hand, but he was able to qualify in seventh to head the third row.
Marquez is looking to become the first premier class rider ever to win the 11 opening races of a season.
Italian legend Giacomo Agostini won the opening 10 races of the premier class season in 1968, 1969 and 1970 at a time when he dominated the sport, the first of those coming in a 10-race season.
"Honestly the most important tomorrow is to finish on the podium. I expect a tough race," said Marquez.
"I'm confident, but I expect that Dani will be strong and also Valentino - we'll see how is his finger but I think he will be strong too - and then Jorge,
"In free practice four we tried some things and I did not like it. So in qualifying we came back to the normal setup like this morning and I felt much better."
Dovizioso added: "I'm really happy about this weekend because every practice we were really fast and really competitive compared to Indy The race tomorrow will be really interesting."
Final qualifying times:
1 Marc Marquez (Esp) Honda 1min 55.585secs
2 Andrea Dovizioso (Ita) Ducati 1:55.714
3 Andrea Iannone (Ita) Ducati 1:55.726
4 Bradley Smith (Gbr) Yamaha 1:55.730
5 Dani Pedrosa (Esp) Honda 1:55.812
6 Jorge Lorenzo (Esp) Yamaha 1:55.815
7 Valentino Rossi (Ita) Yamaha 1:55.821
8 Stefan Bradl (Ger) Honda 1:55.871
9 Pol Espargaro (Esp) Yamaha 1:55.899
10 Aleix Espargaro (Esp) Yamaha 1:56.090
