Indianapolis, USA

Somebody appears to have neglected to inform Marc Marquez of the laws of physics. Though the track is less slippery than it was last year, and so a little faster, where Dani Pedrosa and Jorge Lorenzo upped their pace by three tenths of a second, dipping under last year's pole record, Marc Marquez positively obliterated it. The Spanish rookie put in one of the best laps every seen on a MotoGP bike, and stripped nearly nine tenths of a second off the pole record, held by his teammate Dani Pedrosa. He sits half a second ahead of reigning world champion Jorge Lorenzo, and a fraction more ahead of Pedrosa.

That gap bears repeating. Half a second in a single lap is a world apart in MotoGP: If they both started at the same time, Marc Marquez would have crossed the line 22 meters ahead of Jorge Lorenzo after that first lap, or roughly 11 bike lengths. By comparison, third place man Dani Pedrosa would have followed 60 centimeters later, or just over a wheel length, while Cal Crutchlow would have crossed the line 1.3 meters later, his front wheel in line with Pedrosa's boot and Lorenzo's rear wheel.