Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaro blitzed the MotoGP field at Silverstone on Friday afternoon to lead P2 by a commanding 0.671s over Pramac’s Jorge Martin.
The session saw times rapidly tumble throughout as the field focussed on securing as berth in Saturday morning’s pole position shootout session, Brad Binder’s KTM the first to break the 2:00m barrier in the early goings with a 1:59.889s.
As the session carried on towards the its conclusion Francesco Bagnaia managed to lower the pace into the 1:58s with a 1:58.973s, though the reigning premier class world champion was swiftly damped back from the top spot by Martin.
The scratch Friday time would ultimately be emphatically claimed by Espargaro though as he wheeled his RS-GP to a stunning 1:58.183s effort, leaving him nearly seven-tenths-of-a-second clear of the field as a result.
Binder also managed to find good time in the closing moments of the test to move into third overall on his KTM, the South African narrowly edging the sister Aprilia of Maverick Vinales and Johann Zarco’s Pramac-run Ducati.
FP1 leader Marco Bezzecchi ultimately missed out on a chance to perform the clean sweep thanks to a late crash at Luffield, a smash almost identical in nature to that of Franco Morbidelli’s FP1 smash at the same bend – the Italian ultimately hanging onto sixth overall though thanks to an earlier effort.
Jack Miller ended up seventh on the second factory KTM ahead of Luca Marini, while Gresini’s Alex Marquez rounded off the top ten by just over a tenth ahead of Fabio Quartararo – the Yamaha leading team-mate Morbidelli by just 0.029s but missing out on an automatic Q2 berth once again.
Marc Marquez ended Friday as the best-placed Honda in 13th, the six-time premier class champion lapping a distant 1.272s away from Espargaro’s benchmark but only half-a-second adrift of second-placed Martin.
Enea Bastianini’s tough day continued as he managed only 15th on the timesheets, the Ducati pilot also narrowly missing taking out team-mate Bagnaia after he ran onto the grass at the rapid Maggotts-Becketts esses section.
Miguel Oliveira meanwhile won the battle fo the RNF Aprilia’s in 13th ahead of team-mate Raul Fernandez in 17th, while LCR Honda was left with work to do after riders Takaaki Nakagami and Alex Rins’ stand-in Iker Lecuona completed the day 20th and 22nd respectively, the duo split by the returning Pol Espargaro’s GasGas entry.
