Qatar GP Practice Results

The MotoGP championship began its penultimate round of the season at the Lusail International Circuit on Friday. After a long wait, the premier class riders put in laps at the Qatari track, where Raúl Fernández (Aprilia) was quickest overall. Fabio Di Giannantonio (Ducati) and Maverick Viñales (Aprilia) closed out the Top 3.

The Top 10 was completed by Brad Binder (KTM), Aleix Espargaró (Aprilia), Luca Marini (Ducati), Jorge Martín (Ducati), Pecco Bagnaia (Ducati), Augusto Fernández (KTM) and Marc Márquez (Repsol Honda ), with all of them going through to Q2.

On Saturday, the MotoGP riders will return to the track for FP2 at 1:00pm, and then at 1:40pm will fight for pole in qualifying. The 11-lap sprint race, meanwhile, will take place at 6pm.

First day of work for Repsol Honda Team in Lusail

Marc Márquez and Joan Mir started the Qatar Grand Prix ready to get back to a good feeling with a circuit where they have not raced for more than a year, due to the change of the positioning of the round on the calendar.

Márquez, who finished FP1 in 20th position, managed to improve his feeling at night in Qatar, in the session that gives access to Q2. The Spaniard closed the day with a tenth position that allows him to go directly into Q2.

Mir opted for a similar strategy to that of his teammate, using the first part of the day to setup the RC213V for the evening practice session. However, after an hour of hard work for the Repsol Honda Team rider, he failed to make the cut, finishing 17th.

Qatar GP Practice Results

Statements

Marc Márquez

“It was a better day than we were expecting when we arrived here. To be inside the top ten and into Q2 straight away is really good news for us in the garage. I was able to find a good lap time behind Pecco because that’s how we have to do it. Tomorrow we will try to keep this position and understand how the track evolves before and during the Sprint. We need to look at what the best tyre will be for the time attack and keep adapting as the track changes. For the moment we can be content with what we have done.”

Joan Mir

“A bit of a difficult day for us because the conditions from the morning to the night changed a lot, not just the temperature but also the track. We struggled in the morning and then in the evening the feeling with the first tyre wasn’t so good. This meant I had to go with a lap time from the medium which doesn’t have the same speed as the soft, which was probably a low 53 in the last minutes of the session. We have good information for tomorrow so we can start from a better base.”