Espargaró Leads Portuguese GP Second Practice
Calum Gill 16:15 22/04/2022
Pol Espargaró completed a Repsol Honda clean sweep of Friday MotoGP practice at Portimao in what was a second wet session.
The track conditions gradually got worse thanks to rainfall over the course of the 45-minute session, meaning riders only really had a window to improve on their FP1 times in the opening minutes. Espargaró made the best use of that window, his 01:50.707 cementing him as the FP2 pacesetter and placing him a close second behind Honda factory team-mate Marc Márquez in the day’s combined classification. Márquez also made it a Honda 1-2 in the session itself, six tenths down on Espargaró and four tenths up on the third-fastest rider – Andrea Dovizioso for RNF Yamaha. Fourth-fastest Francesco Bagnaia was one of the three riders to crash during the session, folding the front of his Ducati Desmosedici GP22 at Turn 3 and tumbling through the gravel.
Upon getting up, he took a handful of rocks from the gravel trap with himself, which Ducati manager Davide Tardozzi said was aimed at raising the issue of the gravel at Portimao causing too much pain for riders. But Bagnaia’s fall was not the most painful in the session - this dubious distinction belonged to fellow Valentino Rossi protege Marco Bezzecchi (VR46). The Italian rookie was thrown off his 2021-spec Desmosedici in a rear highside through the high-speed Turn 9 and needed a bit of time to get back up on his feet - but was in the end seemingly largely unhurt, and returned to the track later in the session.
The third crash of FP2 was also a Ducati one, with Pramac’s Johann Zarco falling at Turn 2 in the closing minutes. After a full day of wet-weather running on Friday, qualifying day at Portimao is expected to be hit with intermittent rain - meaning that the Friday classification could yet effectively decide who goes directly to Q2. Therefore, a sufficiently wet FP3 would leave the likes of Brad Binder (Red Bull KTM), Aleix Espargaro (Aprilia), Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha), Álex Rins (Suzuki) and world championship leader Enea Bastianini (Gresini) among those having to fight it out for the two transfer spots in the first qualifying segment.
