MotoGP championship leader Marc Marquez completed a clean sweep of Friday practice sessions at the Austrian Grand Prix, prevailing in a red-flagged second practice.<\/p>\n
The session was suspended with 27 minutes left on the clock following crashes in quick succession for Fabio Quartararo and Miguel Oliveira and the track being checked for potential contamination.<\/p>\n
Quartararo crashed at Turn 6, hurting his hip and groin as he fell off his Yamaha M1 – which stayed upright coming into the gravel trap before thumping the barriers.<\/p>\n
Oliveira then crashed, in less dramatic fashion, at the same place just as Quartararo walked away from the gravel trap – prompting a stoppage for checks. Footage quickly confirmed that team-mate Jack Miller had ridden through that part of the track with a smoking engine, though the Pramac team said afterwards it did not believe the bike had put down any oil.<\/p>\n
The qualifying portion of the session kicked off in earnest once it resumed after a wait of just under 20 minutes. And while Pedro Acosta initially broke the Ducati dominance at the front by tucking in behind Marquez and delivering a strong lap, Marquez returned to the track in the final minutes to reassert himself in first place.<\/p>\n
One of Pecco Bagnaia’s more competitive days this season ended with third place, 0.268s back from Marquez, while Alex Marquez was fourth on the Gresini-run 2024 Ducati.<\/p>\n
Raul Fernandez was a spectacular fifth as the sole Aprilia representative in the top 10, as the Trackhouse team comprehensively outperformed the factory duo – with Marco Bezzecchi in particular labouring to get a clean lap together.<\/p>\n
Jorge Martin was two places ahead of team-mate Bezzecchi, having had his first crash since his return – a Turn 9 off that sent his bike cartwheeling into the barriers – early on in the session.<\/p>\n
Advancing to Q2: M Marquez, Acosta, Bagnaia, A Marquez, Fernandez, Mir, Morbidelli, Zarco, Aldeguer, Binder<\/p>\n
Will contest Q1: Bastianini, Ogura, Marini, Quartararo, Di Giannantonio, Martin, Rins, Bezzecchi, Oliveira, Miller, Vinales*<\/p>\n
*Vinales could withdraw<\/p>\n
Joan Mir (Honda), Franco Morbidelli (V46 Ducati), Johann Zarco (LCR Honda), Fermin Aldeguer (Gresini Ducati) and Brad Binder (KTM) took up the remaining available Q2 spots.<\/p>\n
Enea Bastianini was the fastest rider to miss out on an automatic Q2 spot, despite having looked a potential frontrunner for much of the day.<\/p>\n
Only one Ducati rider – Fabio Di Giannantonio – will be in Q1 on Saturday, while Yamaha was nowhere near getting any of its bikes into the top 10, with Quartararo quickest even despite his painful earlier crash.<\/p>\n
Maverick Vinales’ day ended after just six laps in the afternoon – he completed 16 in the morning – with a lack of strength in his injured left shoulder. A final call on his participation in the rest of the Austrian GP weekend will be made on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MotoGP championship leader Marc Marquez completed a clean sweep of Friday practice sessions at the Austrian Grand Prix,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72278,"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-72277","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\/72277","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=72277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}