Johann Zarco said that his front row start gives him a chance gives him a chance tomorrow ahead of tomorrows Malaysian MotoGP at the Sepang International Circuit.

The Frenchman found pace on Saturday morning and despite rain coming midway through FP4 forcing a wet qualifying session, the Frenchman qualified in second, half a second behind Marc Marquez.

However, due to a penalty given to Marquez, Zarco was promoted into the pole position. Despite the front row start, Zarco is targeting a podium finish in his penultimate race for Yamaha.

“It would be nice to be on the podium tomorrow,” said the satellite Yamaha player.

“It looks like we could have dry conditions tomorrow during the race and in this case I can be competitive. I started struggling on Friday, I was not able to manage the bike or control it, and it had too much spin.

“I was worried because I thought maybe we cannot find a solution, but we found it Saturday morning. I was happy to control the bike and be with the top guys."

With the rain and sudden change of tactic, Zarco said that he fully expected Marquez to be the fastest with the changing conditions. Despite struggling with tyres on his first run, Zarco felt comfortable and was happy with his second run.

“In the afternoon I expected Marc to adapt very quickly and he did it,” he said.

“I started with both soft rain tyres and expected to have a good feeling, but no, I was sliding a lot. I moved to the other one and I could do two laps good. Not good enough for pole but good enough to be second and give to me a lot of chances for tomorrow.”

The Frenchman said that he benefitted from going directly into Q1, allowing him to watch and study the riders lines on the TV’s and prepare for how he would approach Q2.

“It was great to go immediately into Q2 like this, I could analyse what the riders were doing and how the track was in Q1,” he explained.

“I spent all my time in the box watching the practice. I think the grip level is quite okay, it’s sliding in the wet, it’s not the good grip level like the Czech Republic or Japan, but safe enough when it’s constant level of water.

“There was not a lot of water when we were doing qualifying. That’s why we were able to try and do things, a few riders crashed but we can be aware of it.”