Francesco Bagnaia blitzed the field in second practice for the Italian Grand Prix to lead his fellow MotoGP contenders at the end of Friday running ahead of Marco Bezzecchi.
The bulk of the one-hour session was spent refining race setups, with Ducati’s Johann Zarco leading the way on the timesheets on a 1:46.627s just clear of fellow Ducati rider’s Alex Marquez –who led the way in Friday morning’s FP1 outing – and Bezzecchi.
Jorge Martin managed to lower the session benchmark by a few tenths-of-a-second at around the mid-point of the test, though it would be Brad Binder for KTM who was the first to eclipse Marquez’s FP1 benchmark to take over at the peak of the combined times.
The South African’s effort marked the start of a flurry of fast laptimes as the field tried to secure a place in Saturday morning’s pole shootout session, with Bezzecchi soon moving clear before Honda duo Marc Marquez and Alex Rins surprisingly lit up the times to sit atop the lap pylon.
It would be the familiar number one of Francesco Bagnaia’s Ducati that graced the head of the leaderboard as the chequered flag came down on the test though, the reigning world champion brushing off an earlier escapade into the Turn 1 gravel trap to secure the scratch time on Friday thanks to a 1:45.436s.
Bezzecchi managed to find a solid improvement to end the day second on his VR46-run Ducati, while Rins impressed for LCR to end up third overall and just 0.081s adrift of Bagnaia on his Honda.
Binder managed to lift himself up from outside the top ten late on to secure fourth ahead of Martin and the returning Enea Bastianini on the sister factory Ducati entry, while the other Pramac Ducati of Zarco secured the seventh best time.
Marquez managed to hang on to a guaranteed Q2 berth by ending the day eighth quickest ahead of Aleix Espargaro, who recovered from a nasty crash in FP1 to knock team-mate Maverick Vinales out of the top ten with a last-gasp gambit, the Spaniard ultimately coming just 0.011s away from Luca Marini who closed out the automatic Q2 graduates.
Yamaha’s encouraging FP1 outing ultimately came to nought after both its riders failed to improve on their earlier efforts – in part due to both losing their final runs due to Fabio Di Gianantonio crashed out at Turn 1 with just a couple minutes remaining – thus leaving Quartararo a lowly 15th just clear of team-mate Franco Morbidelli.
Also forced to run in Q1 on Saturday are FP1 leader Alex Marquez and KTM’s Jack Miller – who were 13th and 14th respectively – while Ducati tester Michele Pirro was 18th, the first man to lap over a second away from Bagnaia’s benchmark.
Miguel Oliveira ended the day 20th overall as he works on getting back up to speed with his Aprilia following a one race layoff through injury, while Honda’s Joan Mir continued to suffer for speed as he completed Friday all the way down n 22nd having suffered yet another crash, this time at Turn 1 – -his best time 2.1 seconds away from Bagnaia’s leading effort.
