Andrea Dovizioso has said that he won’t be thinking about the MotoGP World Championship and will be instead focused on trying to win the Japanese Grand Prix after qualifying in pole position around the Twin Ring Motegi.

Tomorrow sees Marquez’ first match point to win his fifth MotoGP World Championship at Honda’s home circuit in Japan. Despite mathematically being Marquez’ biggest title challenger, Dovizioso insists he isn’t thinking about that, and just focused on trying to finish ahead of the Spaniard in tomorrows race.

“Marc will try, but it’s normal,” said Dovizioso who has battled with Marquez until the final lap in all of the last three races.

“He has a margin and is able to take a risk like in the last three races. Unfortunately in the last four races we were fighting a lot but we aren’t thinking about the championship, we’re just fighting to win and it will be the same tomorrow.

“So it will not change the fight for the championship and his approach, I think it will be strong like always and he will be in the top three positions after the first lap for sure.”

Dovizioso was strong from the off this weekend and backed up his strong free practice pace with a pole position, which remarkably is just the seventh in his eleven year MotoGP career.

“Yes I’m happy about the pole position and the feeling I had in the pole position,” he said.

“I’m happy also here in the way we worked, because the base was really good from the first practice but we were able to improve a little bit this afternoon and be able to make s really good lap time in the qualifying.

“This morning already we did a 1:45.0 and I had a really good feeling and I knew I was able to make more or less that lap time so the bike worked well. I’m really happy about the feeling I have.

“Marc I think has a really good pace. Today he was the fastest. I didn’t use the new tyre in the afternoon but his pace is really strong. So I think at the moment we are very similar in pace for the race and I think some other riders have a really good pace.

“So lets see tomorrow the conditions and also the tyre choice because I think almost everybody went quite fast with the medium and the soft so everybody has to make the right decision.”