Marquez recovers from huge crash to set Friday pace
Marc Marquez put his ferocious morning crash behind him by topping the second MotoGP session at the Grand Prix of the Americas at Austin.
But the world champion’s closest challenger was a surprise - as Trackhouse Aprilia’s second-year racer Ai Ogura came within 0.053 seconds of beating Marquez, who played himself back in with very muted laptimes in the first half of the session before setting the pace when it counted.
It looked like this might be a breakthrough session for Marquez’s struggling team-mate Pecco Bagnaia as he set the pace for most of the early running. But he faded when everyone switched to qualifying simulations and look at risk of missing Q2 before late rise to eighth.
Fabio Di Giannantonio continued his very strong start to the year for VR46 in third, followed by the Aprilia of championship leader Marco Bezzecchi.
KTM is down to three bikes this weekend after Maverick Vinales’ withdrawal but two of them are straight into Q2 at least. While usual marque talisman Pedro Acosta was sixth, it’s Enea Bastianini’s 10th that will be particularly encouraging given he had qualified 20th and 22nd for this season’s two previous events.
Alex Marquez in fifth, the resurgent Jorge Martin in seventh and top Honda Luca Marini in ninth are the other automatic Q2 participants.
It looked like the session might be chaos when no fewer than six riders crashed within the first 10 minutes. Di Giannantonio, Miller, Enea Bastianini, Franco Morbidelli, Acosta and Ogura all had falls in that wild spell, before things settled and only Toprak Razgatlioglu and Brad Binder fell in the remainder of the hour.
Results
1 Marc Marquez (Ducati) 2m00.927s
2 Ai Ogura (Trackhouse Aprilia) +0.053s
3 Fabio Di Giannantonio (VR46Ducati) +0.187s
4 Marco Bezzecchi (Aprilia) +0.200s
5 Alex Marquez (Gresini Ducati) +0.286s
6 Pedro Acosta (KTM) +0.323s
7 Jorge Martin (Aprilia) +0.338s
8 Pecco Bagnaia (Ducati) +0.444s
9 Luca Marini (Honda) +0.567s
10 Enea Bastianini (Tech3 KTM) +0.652s
11 Joan Mir (Honda) +0.684s
12 Fermin Aldeguer (Gresini Ducati) +0.729s
13 Raul Fernandez (Trackhouse Aprilia) +0.854s
14 Johann Zarco (LCR Honda) +1.025s
15 Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha) +1.110s
16 Jack Miller (Yamaha) +1.315s
17 Diogo Moreira (LCR Honda) +1.380s
18 Toprak Razgatlioglu (Pramac Yamaha) +1.446s
19 Brad Binder (KTM) +1.510s
20 Franco Morbidelli (VR46 Ducati) +1.629s
21 Alex Rins (Yamaha) +2.111s
