MotoGP, Private Test in Barcelona Day 2: Yamaha Still in Contact with Honda! But What About the V4?

After a productive first day, the private test MotoGP continued on Thursday at the Barcelona-Catalonia circuit, still in good weather conditions.

Wednesday, Alex Espargaro, now a Honda HRC test driver, had set the benchmark in 1'40.089 in the afternoon ahead of a Jack Miller who placed his Yamaha M1 from the Pramac Racing team just 77 thousandths behind.
For comparison, last November Alex Marquez had left the official test after posting a top-of-the-table time of 1'38.803, while the official record of the Catalan circuit belongs to Aleix Espargaro in 1'38.190, this time with the Aprilia 2024.

Anyway, taking advantage of the relative coolness, the eldest of the brothers Asparagus repeated Thursday morning by placing his RC213V in first place, with an improvement of 1'39.073, like the day before, ahead of his brother's KTM RC16 Pol (+0,162s).
Next came the two Prima Pramac Yamaha riders, Jack Miller et Miguel Oliveira, respectively at +0,459 and +0,828s, Dani Pedrosa (KTM) at +1,576s, Michele Pirro (Ducati) at 1,708s, then the Yamaha team test.

Here, it should be said that little information has leaked. It is rumored (without any guarantees) that Augusto Fernandez drove the 4-cylinder in-line, Andrea Dovizioso V4, but as the pilot box was desperately empty regarding the three machines present, it was impossible to really know who did what...
In any case, only two of the three bikes were running on Thursday morning (Yamaha2 and Yamaha3), both more than 2 seconds apart, like the previous morning.

The afternoon, Miguel Oliveira made a nice improvement in 1'39.168, which earned him 2nd place in the combined classification, while the Portuguese driver was almost the only one to progress.

Here is our combined standings table for the two days (MotoGP riders):

Pos	#	Pile	Motorcycle	Temps	Dif.	Tours
1	41	Alex Espargaro	Honda RC213V	1'39.073		99
2	88	Miguel Oliveira	Yamaha YZR-M1	1'39.168	0.095	122
3	44	Espargaro Pol	KTM RC16	1'39.235	0.162	136
4	43	Jack Miller	Yamaha YZR-M1	1'39.532	0.459	124
5	26	Dani Pedrosa	KTM RC16	1'40.524	1.451	135
6	51	Michele Pirro	Ducati GP25	1'40.781	1.708	151
7	96B	Andrea Dovizioso/ Augusto Fernandez	Yamaha 2	1'41.080	2.007	53
8	96C	Andrea Dovizioso/ Augusto Fernandez	Yamaha 3	1'41.454	2.381	32
9	96A	Andrea Dovizioso/ Augusto Fernandez	Yamaha 1	1'42.168	01/03/95	49

For those who find the number of laps completed overall impressive, but those completed by the Yamaha test team strangely low, and who would like to try to draw some conclusions from this, here is how they were distributed.

	Wednesday AM	Wednesday PM	Thursday AM	Thursday PM
Yamaha 1	1'42.256 / 33 rpm	the 0	the 0	1'42.168 / 16 rpm
Yamaha 2	the 0	1'41.580 / 32 rpm	1'41.080 / 21 rpm	the 0
Yamaha 3	1'44.646 / 5 rpm	1'44.523 / 3 rpm	1'41.454 / 9 rpm	1'42.255 / 15 rpm