Rins & Suzuki On Top In Qatar After Friday's Running
Calum Gill 16:10 04/03/2022
Suzuki rider Álex Rins ended the first day of MotoGP practice for 2022 on top, heading Marc Márquez by three hundredths of a second in the second premier-class session of the Qatar Grand Prix weekend.
The Friday evening session was widely earmarked as being likely to determine who makes it through to Q2 directly on combined practice times, given the unrepresentative daytime conditions of FP1 and FP3 - and the fact all the best practice laptimes of last year’s two Qatar grand prix weekends were set in the respective FP2 sessions. Indeed, the best times of this year’s first practice were surpassed almost immediately here, and riders began their qualifying simulation runs shortly after the halfway point of the 45-minute session.
For much of the running, it looked a battle between the rejuvenated Suzuki GSX-RRs and the new-look Honda RC213Vs, and that’s exactly how it played out in the end, with Rins jumping out narrowly ahead of Márquez in the closing minutes. The Suzuki man looked likely to go quicker still with a final attempt after the chequered flag, but lost time in the final sector. Behind Márquez, Suzuki’s 2020 champion Joan Mir completed a top three split by 0.147 seconds, followed by the lead Ducati - that of Pramac rider Jorge Martín.
Franco Morbidelli improved in the final minutes to complete the top five as the leading Yamaha, while Jack Miller took sixth, shrugging off being baulked by his Australian compatriot, Tech3 KTM rookie Remy Gardner, in an incident that was briefly placed under investigation and yielded no further action. The other riders likely booking their spots in Q2 were Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaró, Yamaha’s reigning champion Fabio Quartararo, Repsol Honda’s Pol Espargaró and Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia - the latter beating the year-old Gresini Ducati of Enea Bastianini by half a tenth.
Miguel Oliveira was the top KTM in 13th, but all four of the RC16s - including FP1 pacesetter Brad Binder - are now likely to have to contest the first segment of qualifying on Saturday. There were a pair of crashes for LCR Honda rider Álex Márquez, who fell at Turn 6, picked up his seemingly undamaged bike and began to push the next lap, only to fall at Turn 10. The only other rider to tumble was VR46 Ducati’s Luca Marini, whose bike was shredded by the Turn 1 gravel but with Marini thankfully already nowhere near it by then.
