Marc Marquez dominated a tense Friday Practice session for the Australian Grand Prix, leading his brother and Gresini Ducati team-mate Alex on the final timesheets.
MotoGP championship rivals Jorge Martin and Francesco Bagnaia both booked their passages into Saturday’s Q2, though Bagnaia only posted his lap at the last-possible moment in a session that had its complications for both.
Among the big names who will have to fight it out in Q1 are Tech 3 KTM’s Pedro Acosta, who fell in the final minutes of the session, and Bagnaia’s factory Ducati team-mate Enea Bastianini.
Both Martin (Pramac Ducati) and Bagnaia spent quite some time staring at the prospect of missing out on Q2 as things went awry for them early in the session.
With dark clouds lurking in the vicinity of the island circuit, the onus was on getting early laps in whilst it was still dry. Given that these were the first laps any of the field were running on the resurfaced track following the cancellation of FP1, that was a difficult challenge.
Marc Marquez appeared to be untroubled by this ask, however, finding pace immediately and proceeding to spend most of the session at the top of the timing monitors despite a lengthy spell relaxing in the pits. He appeared able to reduce his times at will, with his 1,27.770s best from the session around half a second away from the all-time lap record.
Others, such as the title protagonists, had a harder time under the trying circumstances at the start of the session. Martin, in fact, fell before registering a time. The Spaniard dropped the Ducati under braking for Miller, seemingly caught in two minds about whether or not to squeeze past Fabio Quartararo’s Yamaha.
Unhurt, Martin was able to bring the bike back to the pits, but had an anxious wait as his second machine – set up for wet conditions – was recalibrated for the dry track.
Bagnaia, meanwhile, appeared to have a technical problem with his first bike and was stuck in exactly the same situation as Martin.
Then, once both of them were back on the circuit and up to speed, their laps were interrupted by a red flag. For the second time in Friday’s track activity, a Cape Barren goose wandering across the asphalt was the culprit.
Fortunately for the two title combatants, it turned out there had been no reason to panic as the feared rain failed to materialise before the end of the session. Martin was nonetheless up to speed faster than Bagnaia, and was up into…
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