Quartararo shrugs off early crash to lead British MotoGP FP2 ahead of Espargaro

Fabio Quartararo dominated FP2 for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone as he lapped over half-a-second faster than anyone else despite suffering a nasty crash at Vale early on.

The Yamaha pilot wasn’t out on track very long before losing the rear of his M1 at the slow left-hander, the bike sliding round and high-siding the Frenchman-Quartararo landing heavily on the tarmac with his plight not helped with his leg being briefly caught up with the bike.

A visibly in-pain Quartararo limped away, though his condition seemed to rapidly improve and he re-joined the action less than 20 minutes later.

In the meantime Aleix Espargaro had managed to post the fastest lap of the day on his Aprilia, a 2:00.467s leaving him marginally ahead of brother Pol and the Pramac Ducati of Johann Zarco.

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Long-runs were on the menu throughout the bulk of the test, though fast times were once again back on the agenda as the clock ticked down.

Quartararo was keen to come back swinging, the series leader firing in a stunning 1:59.317s in the closing seconds to beat his previous session leading benchmark-a 2:00.138s that was decently fastet than anyone else-by nearly a second.

Jack Miller got the closest to matching Quartararo on the timesheets, though the Aussie was still 0.512s adrift of drawing level with the blazing pace of the Yamaha.

Jorge Martin made it two Ducati’s in the top three a further tenth back, while Pol Espargaro and Marc Marquez continued to prove Honda’s pedigree around the Silverstone circuit in fourth and fifth respectively.

Francesco Bagnaia was sixth overall ahead of Aleix’s Aprilia, while Brad Binder enjoyed a more fruitful outing compared to FP1 as he ended Friday as the best-placed KTM runner in eighth.

Alex Rins bagged ninth for Suzuki, while a decent improvement for Valentino Rossi saw him complete the top ten runners as the opening day of the British GP weekend came to a close.

Joan Mir once again failed to star after only managing the 15^th best time in FP1, the reigning MotoGP world champion improving slightly to 13^th in the afternoon, while Zarco and Takaaki Nakagami also fell down the order to 14^th and 15^th.

Nakagami’s LCR team-mate Alex Marquez suffered his second crash of the day after crashing at Farm in FP1, the Spaniard this time losing control of his Honda at the rapid Becketts corner, the bend following on from where brother Marc had a scary crash in the morning session.  

Home hero Cal Crutchlow was 16^th on the second factory Yamaha, while countryman Jake Dixon continued to gather information as he learned to get the most from a MotoGP machine on his way to 21^st overall-3.2 seconds adrift of Quartararo’s leading gambit.