Binder leads KTM 1-2 but Bagnaia to go through Q1 again

Brad Binder led a factory KTM 1-2 while reigning MotoGP champion Francesco Bagnaia suffered a disastrous Practice 2 as he missed out on an automatic Q2 spot.

Robert Jones

20 Oct 2023

Brad Binder, KTM MotoGP Phillip Island 2023

Jorge Martin was fastest by seven tenths in FP1, but at the start of Practice 2 is was the Ducati of Fabio Di Giannantonio that led the way.

Off the back of his best finish in MotoGP at Mandalika, Di Giannantonio was quickest from the factory KTM duo of Jack Miller and Brad Binder, before the latter went fastest with a time of 1:29.744s.

Binder and Miller were then separated by Pol Espargaro, making it an all-KTM top three.

Binder then improved again as he set a 1:29.365s as Marco Bezzecchi split the KTM’s by moving up to P2.

The top Honda rider in 11th, Marc Marquez suffered his 25th fall of the season after a slow crash at turn ten.

Marquez nearly produced another one of his miracle saves, but after failing to do so, re-starting the bike was proving problomatic.

Fastest in the first three sectors, Maverick Vinales went very close to topping Binder’s time, however, a very small mistake coming out of the final corner saw him lose close to three tenths.

After challenging on his next lap around, Vinales improved again on his third flying lap on the new soft rear tyre.

One of the next riders to make a significant improvement was Fabio Quartararo, as the Mandalika podium finisher went third fastest on his first time attack run.

Top spot eventually changed hands as Di Giannantonio went quickest by just -0.006s, however, the Italian was quickly bumped down to second by Johann Zarco.

Aleix Espargaro then destroyed Zarco’s top time after going four tenths clear and setting the first sub 1m 29s lap of the weekend.

But Espargaro’s team-mate Vinales was determined to go quickest, which he did on the first lap of his second time attack stint.

Vinales set a time of 1:28.649s in order to better Espargaro’s lap by half a tenth.

Like Espargaro, Vinales spent very little time at the head of the leaderboard as Martin showed stunning speed once again.

Despite finding improvements, Bagnaia was still struggling as he could only move up from 19th to 14th.

Sector two and three were proving very challenging and where he lost huge amounts of time to title rival Martin.

Further improvements came during the final run as Vinales momentarily went top before a sub 1m 28s lap was set by Binder.