Fernandez fastest as Martin overcomes grip woes in crucial practice session

Raul Fernandez tops his first-ever MotoGP session as Jorge Martin and Francesco Bagnaia secure Q2 spots during Practice 2 at Lusail.

Robert Jones

17 Nov 2023

Raul Fernandez, Aprilia MotoGP Lusail 2023

Riders wasted no time in finding the extra grip under the floodlights, as Fabio Di Giannantonio led the way with a time that was faster than Jorge Martin’s FP1 effort.

With just five minutes gone, Pol Espargaro carried on that momentum as he broke into the 1m 54s barrier.

Raul Fernandez, who made a very strong start to the Qatar MotoGP weekend, then went quickest with a time of 1:54.309s.

It was a slow start to Practice 2 for Martin, as the title contender was down in 22nd before returning to pit lane after just nine minutes.

Jack Miller, who was continuing to run KTM’s new aero package on the rear of the bike, saw it break off after a crash in sector four.

At the front, Maverick Vinales was the new pacesetter after setting a time of 1:54.148s.

Despite changes to his number one bike, Martin was unabel to improve his position as he remained last come the end of his second stint.

A very frustrated figure, Martin’s mechanics then moved over to his second bike for his next stint.

Following Miller in going down at turn 14 was Johann Zarco as the Pramac rider lost the front-end of his Ducati.

One of the first riders to fit a new soft rear tyre, Vinales smashed Miguel Oliveira’s top time by over six tenths of a second.

Further back, Martin was slowly making progress as he moved up to 19th place, one spot behind a struggling Marc Marquez.

With the grip level continuing to pick up, the first 1m 52s lap came in courtesy of Di Giannantonio.

At the start of their first time attack run both Martin and Bagnaia jumped into the top ten.

However, mistakes were still coming from Martin as he abandoned his next lap and returned to pit lane.

There was late drama as Bagnaia had a lap time deleted which put him in danger, however, the world champion improved on his penultimate lap and secured a Q2 spot, as did Martin.

Vinales thought he set a new all-time lap record, only for his time to be deleted for a yellow flag infringement.