Marc Marquez completed a clean sweep of MotoGP's rain-affected Friday at the Czech Grand Prix at Brno.
Marquez's team-mate Pecco Bagnaia was the biggest outlier in the conditions, relegated to Q1 tomorrow while his rival for second in the championship, Alex Marquez, salvaged a top-10 spot in remarkable fashion in the final moments.
Rain had drenched the circuit during the preceding Moto3 practice, forcing an early end to that session and a 20-minute delay to the start of MotoGP practice.
Unsurprisingly, it never did dry enough for slicks during the hour-long MotoGP session, but a clear dry line did form for the closing stages as riders fought it out for Q2 spots.
Yet improvements looked difficult to come by in the final minutes, presumably due to the wet rubber overheating, and Marquez's top spot - secured with a 2m03.935s - was under little threat.
Marquez himself quickly abandoned ambitions of improving after a Turn 8 scare, in which he lost the front and just narrowly avoided a crash, but still ended up nearly half a second ahead of his nearest rival - LCR Honda's Johann Zarco.
Advancing to Q2: M Marquez, Zarco, Quartararo, Bezzecchi, Martin, Miller, Mir, Bastianini, A Marquez, Acosta
Will contest Q1: R Fernandez, Aldeguer, Bagnaia, Rins, Binder, Di Giannantonio, Espargaro, A Fernandez, Oliveira, Ogura, Nakagami, Marini
Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha) and Marco Bezzecchi (Aprilia) completed the top four, Bezzecchi overcoming a big crash earlier in the session in which he was thrown off his bike after hitting a big puddle coming out of Turn 3.
Bezzecchi's team-mate Jorge Martin followed the Italian on his fastest lap, but anyway looked good value for the top 10 all throughout the day - with fifth place in the end underlining a strong first day back in official MotoGP action after his long injury absence.
Jack Miller (Pramac Yamaha), Joan Mir (Honda), Enea Bastianini (Tech3 KTM), Alex Marquez (Gresini Ducati) and Pedro Acosta (KTM) took up the final Q2 spots.
The younger Marquez was staring straight down the barrel of a first Q1 appearance of the season when he crashed at Turn 7 with around seven minutes to go.
He sprinted to the service road to hop on a photographer's scooter as a passenger and ran into his pit garage with three minutes left on the clock, immediately setting off on a run - which ended up securing him ninth place.
It was a rough showing for Bagnaia, third in the championship, who looked totally out of sorts on the drying track in the final minutes and finally rolled out of a fruitless last-gasp attempt to make the top 10.
