The delay in cancelling Marc Marquez’s MotoGP Japanese Grand Prix p♉ole lap has been blamed on♒ a software glitch.

The Gresini rider set a 1m42.868s in the closing stages of Q2 on Saturday morning at Motegi to take provisional pole, but had the la💮p cancelled for exceeding track limits.

However, the lap didn’t come off the board until after the chequered flag was flown, which meant he had no tim👍e to try for another time and was dumped to ninth on the grid.

The Gresini team was furious with this in its garage, whiꦓle Marquez replied to a MotoGP social media post about him exceeding track limits with: “Agreed [with the penalty] but… the notification times are the notifi𓆉cation times.”

While the initial 💜stewards’ document for Saturday’s incidents did not offer an explanation on the 📖Marquez situation, a later update revealed a software glitch was to blame.

“The MotoGP stewards investig♈ated a delayed track limits application concerning Marc Marquez,” the brief statement read.

“This was determined to be due to a software glitch and the lap was therefore 🐟manually cancell⛦ed.”

Marquez told TNT Sport on the matter: “Yeah, of course this morning was a bit confusing, especially for that late notification because on the bike it’s impossible to realise if you touch the green sometimes or no꧋t.

“Then I saw the lap was not cancell💞ed, so I said ‘Ok, there’s no point to pushing more’, because there were some drops [of rain].

“So 🌠I said with that lap time I’ll be on the front row, which was the target.

“Unfortunately for us, ther🐠e was that very late notification.

“The stewards told me that they had problems with the connecﷺtions.

“Unlucky, but it is what it is. The job was try to forget that,✅ concentrate on the sprint race and we did our best one more time.”

Marqu𓂃ez came through to fourth in the early laps of the sprint and was🗹 promoted to third when Pedro Acosta crashed out of the lead.

He battled hard with Enea Bastianinജi for second in the latter stages, but had to concede defeat to the facto🥀ry Ducati rider.

“It’s true൩ that in those first laps I was pushing a bit too much and then I overheated theꦑ front tyre,” he added.

“Then I cooled down a bit to try to understand where I was, but then in the last lꦫaps I was catching t😼hem and I was starting to ride in a very good way.

“In that fight with Enea, in that last lap he defended super good and it was too much risk [to pass him]. I tried, because I try, bu🦋t he defended in a very good way.”