Aleix Espargaro and Maverick Vinales completed Aprilia’s domination of Friday practice for the Argentina Grand Prix as the duo finished up 1-2 in FP2, with Fabio Quartararo only 14th.
With rain staying away from the Termas de Rio Hondo circuit having made an appearance earlier in the day, the 18 MotoGP riders entered into this weekend’s action had another chance to secure an automatic passage into Saturday’s pole position shootout.
In the end it was Espargaro though that narrowly got the better of FP1 leader Vinales to end Friday at the peak of the timesheets.
The Spaniard – who secured his and Aprilia’s debut premier class win at the Argentinean venue 12 months ago – posted a 1:38.518 in the closing stanza of the session to secure the top placing overnight by 0.162s over Vinales, with Marco Bezzeccchi completing the top three on his VR46-run Ducati.
The sister VR46 entry of Luca Marini slotted in behind his team-mate in fourth overall just ahead of Pramac Ducati’s Johann Zarco, with reigning MotoGP world champion Francesco Bagnaia ending the day sixth quickest on the sole factory Ducati present this weekend following Enea Bastianini’s Portuguese GP sprint race incident that fractured his right shoulder.
Jorge Martin was seventh on the other Pramac-run Desmosedici, while Takaaki Nakagami continued his strong Friday form to end up eighth fastest for LCR Honda, the Japanese ace lapping 0.553s from Espargaro’s benchmark.
Franco Morbidelli out-paced Yamaha team-mate Quartararo once again to secure a guaranteed Q2 spot with ninth, while Alex Rins completed the automatic pole shootout contestants with the tenth best time – the LCR rider pipping Gresini’s Alex Marquez by just 0.067s.
Quartararo’s tough opening day continued as he struggled to maximise corner speed on his M1, the Frenchman only just beating his FP1 classification of 15th with the 14th best effort in FP2, meaning he will have to try and escape Q1 on Saturday morning if he is to have any chance of fighting for at least a top ten starting spot for the sprint race and grand prix.
KTM also continued to struggle for speed over a single lap, with Brad Binder ending up as the best-placed RC16 pilot in 12th overall – the South African nearly seven-tenths-of-a-second down on the best time of the day – with factory team-mate Jack Miller heading GasGas rookie Augusto Fernandez for 16th and 17th respectively on the sister machines.
