MotoGP 2017: Marquez takes unexpected Austrian GP pole

Repsol Honda's Marc Marquez took an unexpected pole position, with riders from Ducati joining the Spaniard on the front row.

With a time of 1m23.473s, defending MotoGP champion Marc Marquez claimed pole position for the Austrian Grand Prix. It was his third consecutive pole position at the Red Bull Ring.

Andrea Dovizioso and Jorge Lorenzo, on their factory Ducatis, came pretty close to Marquez's time, grabbing second and third position by ending up just 0.144s and 0.386s off the pace, respectively.

Yamaha's Valentino Rossi grabbed the seventh spot, 0.003s ahead of Honda's Dani Pedrosa who had to go through Q1 to get to the main qualifying session.

Suzuki's Andrea Iannone managed tenth, after his machine recovered from a mechanical fault in FP4. Iannonne was the winner of his first ever premier class race at the Red Bull Ring last year. Karel Abraham (Pull & Bear Aspar Team) and Loris Baz (Reale Avintia Racing) completed the top twelve.

Jonas Folger from the Tech 3 Yamaha squad was thirteenth on the grid and missed out on the graduation to Q2. The session proved to be disappointing one for Aprilia, whose Aleix Espargaro could only manage the 20th position.

With 154 points, Marquez has maintained his championship lead by 14 points over Vinales (140 points) and Dovizioso (133 points). The final race begins on Sunday, August 13 at 14:30 (IST).