Markus Zoerweg
Head of Motorcycle Department
With the outstanding MSM motorcycle gang, Markus keeps things running at MotoGP, WSBK & Co. He likes to irritate people with his Austrian accent.MORE
The result: Aleix Espargaro beat Francesco Bagnaia’s previous record lap in 1:38.562 minutes and was 0.072 seconds faster than Brad Binder, who finished second despite two crashes. Third place went to Pedro Acosta ahead of Bagnaia and Jack Miller. World Championship leader Jorge Martin took P6, followed by Enea Bastianini and Franco Morbidelli. Alex Rins and Maverick Vinales secured the last places for direct entry into Q2.
The Marquez brothers Alex (11th) and Marc (12th), Fabio Quartararo (14th) and Marco Bezzecchi (15th) will be among those competing in Q1 on Saturday. Honda wildcard Stefan Bradl was unable to take part in training due to an upset stomach.
Falls, defects & incidents: Brad Binder caused the first crash of the MotoGP weekend after just a few minutes. He lost control of his KTM when turning from turn one to turn two and had to abandon the motorcycle at the scene of the accident.
In his first fast lap with the second bike, Binder only managed a few meters, slipped again in Turn 2 and had to park his spare bike. Binder finally returned to the pits with bike number two a few minutes late, and his first bike had already made it to the garage. 13 minutes before the end of the session, Binder was finally able to get back into training.
Fabio Quartararo crashed in Turn 5. Fabio Di Giannantonio also crashed in Turn 5 and went down again in Turn 10 in the final phase of the training session. Alex Marquez and Augusto Fernandez also crashed.
The weather: After an FP1 in heavy cloud cover, the sun came out in Barcelona for the MotoGP training on Friday afternoon. With an outside temperature of 22 degrees, the drivers were confronted with significantly hotter asphalt: 42 degrees were measured on the track surface.
© Motorsport Magazine