{"id":120503,"date":"2025-09-05T10:24:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T10:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/120503\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T10:24:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T10:24:07","slug":"marquezs-ominous-start-in-acosta-led-catalan-gp-fp1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/120503\/","title":{"rendered":"Marquez’s ominous start in Acosta-led Catalan GP FP1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pedro Acosta’s KTM led Johann Zarco’s LCR Honda in first practice for MotoGP’s Catalan Grand Prix at Barcelona, but Marc Marquez clearly signposted his likely domination of his home event.<\/p>\n

Marquez set his best time of the morning on only his fourth lap of the day, and he and brother Alex then held a 1-2 until most others took new tyres at the end.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Marc stayed on his old rubber and carried on putting in personal best sector times without improving on his initial best.<\/p>\n

He remained third, two places ahead of Alex, with Maverick Vinales fourth between their Ducatis on his return from injury.<\/p>\n

Vinales and 10th-placed Enea Bastianini’s Tech3 KTM team is set to be the centre of attention later on Friday when the squad’s takeover by ex-Formula 1 team boss Guenther Steiner and his consortium is due to be announced<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Though Pecco Bagnaia often had muted starts to Fridays even in his greatest days, and didn’t run new tyres at the end this time, his low-key 23rd place behind Aprilia test rider Lorenzo Savadori and ahead of only injury-returnee Somkiat Chantra’s LCR Honda looked genuinely bleak.<\/p>\n

Home favourite Aleix Espargaro lived up to his Thursday declaration of Honda gains<\/a> by putting his wildcard entry ninth, despite having feared injuries from a recent cycling crash might even stop him competing this weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pedro Acosta’s KTM led Johann Zarco’s LCR Honda in first practice for MotoGP’s Catalan Grand Prix at Barcelona,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120504,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-120503","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}