VALENCIA, Spain — An "inspired" Jorge Lorenzo will start from pole position in Sunday's MotoGP in Valencia after setting a new track record in qualifying Saturday for his Yamaha swansong.
The Spaniard clocked a fastest lap of 1min 29.401sec for the 65th pole of his career ahead of compatriot Marc Marquez of Honda and Italian teammate Valentino Rossi for the final race of the season.
Marquez, 23, won his third world title with three races to spare and comes into the Valencia race with five wins in 2016 — Argentina, Grand Prix of the Americas, Germany, Aragon and Japan.
The title may be sewn up but Sunday he still has another target — a record 22nd constructors' championship for Honda.
Three-time world champion Lorenzo will be riding his last race for Yamaha after nine years with the Japanese outfit before switching to Ducati for the 2017 season.
"My motivation was full-on because I wanted to get the best challenge for pole position, but tomorrow is going to be the most important because that decides the victory," said Lorenzo, chasing his 44th win with Yamaha.
"At least I can say that in the last race with Yamaha I got pole position and I think that today I was inspired."
Nine-time world champion Rossi has already wrapped up second place in the world championship leaving Lorenzo to battle for third spot ahead of Suzuki's Maverick Vinales.
"At this track Jorge and Marc are very strong and I'm very happy about this front row because usually I struggle always at Valencia and during the practices, from yesterday to today, we had a lot of problems," said the Italian veteran Rossi.
"We weren't fast enough but we improved and I think I did a quite good lap, but they are still a bit faster. Depending very much on the pace, I hope to be strong enough to be able to fight for the podium."
France's Johann Zarco of Kalex will start from pole in the Moto2 category, the two-time world champion setting a new track record of 1:34.879 in the category to lead Switzerland's Thomas Luthi and Franco Morbidelli of Italy on the Ricard-Tormo circuit.
Spaniard Aron Canet will start from pole in the Moto3 category. It will be the first pole start for the 17-year-old Honda rider in his debut season after clocking the fastest time ahead of South African world champion Brad Binder (KTM) and Japan's Hiroki Ono (Honda).
