Pol Espargaro “was begging for more rain” - then went faster

Pol Espargaro continued his stellar form as a Tech3 KTM stand-in with eighth on the timesheets during Friday practice for the Malaysian MotoGP.

That put the Spaniard directly through to Qualifying 2, once again, as the second-best RC16 rider behind only session leader Pedro Acosta.

Espargaro set a 1m 58.5s on his first time attack and admitted he was “begging for more rain” as he was pushed down the order.

But he needn’t have worried. The Spaniard slashed half-a-second from his best time during his final run to briefly hold third place.

That became eighth at the chequered flag, securing an all-important top ten place with a lap time half-a-second from Acosta but the same margin clear of next best KTM rider Brad Binder (17th).

"I’m very pleased with the work done today,” smiled Espargaro. “[Just like in] Australia, everything comes together when I push, so it is a great feeling.

“After the first lap time, it started to rain, and I was begging for more rain, because my lap time was already fast, and I did not know if I could go faster!

“Then, we all went for it again, and I could improve by half a second, which is so fast, but still 0.5 seconds slower than Pedro, but it is amazing for us anyway.

“The weekend is starting well, with two KTMs inside the top 10, so let’s try to keep the work going, and hopefully we can qualify well for both sprint and race."

Tech3 team-mate Enea Bastianini experienced a very different day, finishing just 19th fastest, 1.394s from Acosta.

"We are once again in a similar scenario to all the other weekends,” said Bastianini, a Sepang MotoGP winner in 2023 “Friday feels like we are riding this bike for the first time, then we get better on Saturday, but it is too late for Sunday.

“The confidence on the bike here is too low, we did not get any positive feeling today.

“It feels very strange to be two seconds slower than a few years ago, on a track that I have always been fast on, and I don’t know what we can do to fix that, without the confidence.

“We are far from our potential right now, so we have a lot of work to do to get back a good feeling."