Marco Bezzecchi finished the first day of MotoGP practice at the Sachsenring in 1st place.
The VR46-Ducat driver secured the narrow best time of 1:20271 minutes ahead of brand colleague Jorge Martin (Pramac-Ducati) and Aleix Espargaro (Aprilia). The session was overshadowed by numerous falls.
After rain showers in the early afternoon, the track was largely dry again at the start of the second practice session in the premier class. There were still some wet spots. Right from the start, the drivers used slicks.
There was an incident in the first few minutes at turn 11: Takaaki Nakagami lost control of his Honda and slid into the gravel trap at high speed. His bike rolled over several times. The Japanese initially seemed unharmed.
First red flag after Nakagami crash
As a result of the crash, the session was halted at 51:46 because there were some carbon pieces on the track that Nakagami had lost while sliding.
As heard from the pit lane, Nakagami was driving the Kalex chassis at the time of his crash, which he will be able to test at the Sachsenring for the first time. So far, the Honda factory pilots Joan Mir and Marc Marquez had collected kilometers with it.
The session was resumed shortly after the interruption. The drivers initially focused on working with used tires and their race pace. There were no increases compared to the first training session. Miguel Oliveira (RNF-Aprilia) led the classification for a long time.
Oliveira’s teammate Raul Fernandez caused another incident in the middle of the session: he crashed in the Waldmann corner, skidded a few more meters and finally got stuck in the middle of the track. Fernandez immediately shook hands.
The Spaniard did not continue training and was instead taken to the track’s medical center. To be on the safe side, Nakagami also had himself checked through there.
Shortly before the final hunt for times, another driver went down in turn 10, Oliveira. Marc Marquez also almost crashed, but was just able to avoid a crash in the Waldmann curve. The Spaniard was visibly upset and gave his Honda the middle finger, as revealed by his onboard camera.
In the final phase, the field got the fresh tires out again. After all, the fight for the top 10 was also about getting into Q2. Compared to the first practice session, significantly more drivers managed to get into the 1:20 times.
Among them was Maverick Vinales (Aprilia), who caused the next crash in turn 1. Shortly thereafter, Marc Marquez also slipped there. His Honda slammed into the Ducati of Johann Zarco, who had just come out of the pit lane.
His motorcycle was torn in two. Zarco remained lying on the tarmac, but luckily was able to get up and run away on his own.
Second red flag after Marquez incident
The session was paused a second time to clear debris and restarted for the last three minutes. And although Fabio Di Giannantonio (Gresini-Ducati) caused yellow flags again at Turn 11, some riders managed to improve on their final fast laps.
So Bagnaia, who had meanwhile taken the lead, was initially ousted by Aleix Espargaro. Bezzecchi and Martin passed him again at the last moment. Only a tenth of a second separated the top 4 at the end.
And otherwise the distances were narrow. Jack Miller (KTM) was just 0.149 seconds back in fifth. The remaining top 10 places with Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha), the Ducatis of Luca Marini, Enea Bastianini and Alex Marquez and Brad Binder (KTM) were within half a second of the lead.
Zarco remained in 14th place after being cleared by Marc Marquez. However, his best time from the morning helped the Pramac driver to move directly into Q2, because he was faster than Binder, who fell back to eleventh place in the overall classification.
Sachsenring serial winner Marc Marquez did not make it into the top 10 as a result of his late crash. He ended Friday in 14th place, just ahead of Oliveira, who ended up being passed down to 15th place after a long lead. Jonas Folger (Tech-3-GasGas) brought up the rear again, this time 2.5 seconds back.