Espargaro fastest as lap record tumbles in Practice 2 at Mandalika

Aleix Espargaro was fastest as he led a factory Aprilia 1-2 during second practice for the Indonesian MotoGP.

13 Oct 2023

Aleix Espargaro, Aprilia MotoGP Mandalika 2023

With less than ten minutes gone, Brad Binder was part of a two-rider crash at turn 11.

The factory KTM rider lost the front-end of his RC16 before Augusto Fernandez fell whilst running directly behind him. The crash for Fernandez led to his bike sliding into Binder’s machine.

At the head of the leaderboard was Aleix Espargaro, after the Aprilia rider overhauled early pacesetter Fabio Di Giannantonio.

Jack Miller then made it three crashes for KTM riders after the Australian went down at turn 11. Miller fell after avoiding a slow-moving Enea Bastianini.

After seeing teammate Maverick Vinales go quickest, Espargaro responded in short order with a time of 1:31.347s.

After struggling for the first half of the session, Francesco Bagnaia began to find his rhythm as he went ninth quickest.

The problem for Bagnaia is that title rival Jorge Martin was quicker and sat third ahead of Di Giannantonio and Marc Marquez.

Still not entirely comfortable, Bagnaia was set to improve his lap time before making a mistake at the penultimate corner.

Vinales was the next rider who came close to suffering a crash as he momentarily lost the front-end of his RS-GP23 at turn ten.

With under 20 minutes to go, time attack runs were in full flow as Espargaro began lighting up the sector times.

Espargaro gained close to three tenths on his already-leading time before beginning his next lap with two stunning sectors. However, Espargaro’s lap went to waste as he crashed at turn ten.

Espargaro’s teammate then became the first-ever rider to break the 1m 31s barrier at Mandalika, before Marco Bezzecchi went another two tenths clear.

One rider who was not in the mix for top spot was Bagnaia, with the world champion over eight tenths down after three sectors.

The factory Ducati team’s day got worse as Enea Bastianini suffered a crash at the beginning of his final stint - turn 11.

As Martin and Brad Binder found huge amounts of time to slot into the top four, Bagnaia saw his latest lap cancelled due to yellow flags after coming across Miller who fell for a second time - turn one.

After crashing on his previous run, Espargaro made the most of his final time attack stint as he set a new lap record.

On course to finally make it into the top ten, Bagnaia suffered a huge wobble coming into the final few corners which resulted in him losing out. Joan Mir, who was following Bagnaia closely, then crashed moments later.