Marquez: Painkillers for the race

Reigning MotoGP champion Marc Marquez hopes painkillers will help his race day chances, after qualifying an impressive second for Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix.

The Repsol Honda star underwent surgery exactly one week ago after fracturing his left little finger in a dirt track accident.

Marquez has avoided using painkillers for practice and qualifying, when he bounced back from a final practice fall to put his RC213V second on the grid behind Jorge Lorenzo.

Crucially for Marquez, he will also start one row in front of Lorenzo's Yamaha team-mate Valentino Rossi, who is 30-points clear of Marquez after their clash in Argentina.

"We knew it would be hard work to get onto the front row," said Marquez, who won the opening ten races of last season but has claimed only one win from the three events this year.

"We had prepared three sets of tyres to use in the qualifying session, however, after the crash, I preferred not to push things and we used just the two - but we could not make it onto pole.

"The goal was the front row and we succeeded, so I am very happy about that, but we also know that tomorrow will be a difficult race and it will be hard to finish the 27 laps.

"Today I was able to ride without painkillers and tomorrow I will be using them. The finger is painful after a few laps so that will be important, but the finger also feels no worse than yesterday and Dr Mir said that is a good thing.

"I'm happy with the package and tomorrow we will see where we can be and we will try to fight for the podium.

"Jorge is really impressive this weekend, at the moment he is one step in front of us. With Valentino we have a similar pace, but we know he always improves for the race.

"Of course we will try to do something in the warm-up but [fighting the Yamahas for victory] is not the main target for this weekend. The most important is get points and try to finish on the podium.

"The biggest question mark for me is my physical condition. I struggle most when the bike moves under braking. I've changed the handlebar grip and I'm pushing more with the right arm to compensate for the finger and it stresses more the muscles. Maybe I'll be finished by lap 15.

"I'll try to be a little smoother than usual, give 100 percent, concentrate and try to forget about the finger."

Marquez suffered the finger injury when his hand was run over by a friend.

Marquez, whose team-mate Dani Pedrosa remains on the sidelines for a third successive race following arm pump surgery, won last year's Spanish Grand Prix by 1.4s from Rossi.