MARQUEZ PIPS MILLER IN COTA PRACTICE
Marc Marquez has continued his strong form in recent years at the Circuit of the America’s just pipping Jack Miller for the fastest time at the end of practice for the US MotoGP round.
The Honda rider has provisionally secured himself a spot in Q2 with the fastest time of 2m04.164s, just 0.015s ahead of the Australian Ducati rider in a flurry of fast times at the end of the session.
After a wet start to the first practice session, riders took full advantage of the dry circuit in FP2 to bank a lap time just in case tomorrow’s FP3 session is weather interrupted as expected.
The second 45-minute practice session started out relatively uneventful as teams used the better conditions to test race setups of harder tyre compounds as they built up to the final 10-minutes of the session.
Once the qualifying simulation runs started, things intensified quickly. The bumpy COTA layout caught out a number of riders as they pushed the limits to set a representative time.
In quick succession, Iker Lecuona (Tech3 KTM), Aleix Espargaro (Aprilia), Miguel Oliveira (Red Bull KTM) all crashed out of the session, albeit in relatively minor incidents by MotoGP standards.
Miller had a slight scare through Turn 1 after setting a quick time, when he was caught out by the bumps and was sent off the circuit but managed to keep the bike upright.
Suzuki’s Joan Mir was another who was almost thrown off his bike by the bumps, showing some impressive rodeo skills to Texan fans to stay on the bike.
Championship leader Fabio Quartararo ended the day third fastest on the factory Yamaha.
Honda showed good consistent pace at the American venue with Pol Espargaro fourth, just ahead of satellite LCR rider Takaaki Nakagami who recovered from a fall in FP1 to end the day fifth, having sat at the top of the timesheets earlier in the session.
Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia set the sixth-fastest time just ahead of the two Pramac entries of Jorge Martin and Johann Zarco.
Alex Rins was the best of the Suzuki riders in ninth just ahead of rookie Enea Bastianini (Avintia Esponsorama), who appears to have done enough to secure himself the final automatic spot into Q2 should the weather arrive as expected for FP3.
Brad Binder ended the day as the best on the KTM riders but in 11th just ahead of Luca Marino on the VR46 entry.
After his scare earlier in the session, Mir could only muster the 13th fastest time. The Spaniard is running Kevin Schwantz’s number this weekend as a special tribute to the 1993 500cc champion who spent his entire career on Suzuki equipment.
Andrea Dovizioso (SRT) and Franco Morbidelli (Yamaha) have some work ahead of them as they get back up to speed, in 14th and 15th respectively.
Rounding out the 21 runners was Alex Marquez (LCR), Valentino Rossi (SRT), Oliveira, Espargaro, Danilo Petrucci (Tech3 KTM) and Lecuona.
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