Argentina, MotoGP, FP2: The response from Ducati and El Diablo 5th!

Unquestionably, Marc Márquez left his mark on the first free practice session of the Argentine Grand Prix. Starting last due to a small technical problem, the Spanish driver was quickly able to impose an inaccessible pace on all of his opponents, even preceding the latter by more than a second for a good part of the session.

In the end, the Honda driver gained 1/2 a second on the best time of Dani Pedrosa last year, preceding a Jack Miller who established himself as the standard bearer of the Ducati troops.

Conversely, this first trial run turned into a nightmare for Danilo Petrucci who fell there and did not have time to do better than 20th.

Between these 2 near extremes, the 2 French representatives who will be Johann zarco et Fabio Quartararo pleased their fans by entering the top 10, one riding a rather reluctant machine, the other with no MotoGP experience on this track.

Compared to this morning, the sky has become noticeably cloudier and the temperatures are now 25° in the air and 33° on the ground, which, together with a less dirty and more rubberized track, allows us to anticipate some improvements. …

Here are the references available at the start of this 2-minute FP45:

Argentine GP MotoGP™	2018	2019
FP1	1'40.303 Dani Pedrosa (See here)	1'39.827 Marc Márquez (See here)
FP2	1'39.395 Marc Márquez (See here)	1'39.181 Andrea Dovizioso
FP3	1'48.896 Marc Márquez (See here)
FP4	1'49.358 Marc Márquez (See here)
Q1	1'49.128 Aleix Espargaró (See here)
Q2	1'47.153 Jack Miller (See here)
Warm Up	1'48.428 Marc Márquez (See here)
Course	Crutchlow, Zarco, Rins (See here)
All time lap record	1'37.683 Marc Márquez 2014

Like he usually does, Jorge Lorenzo the last one leaves when the red lights go out. In his first flying lap, Pol Espargaro seems to have a problem with his left handlebars and pulls straight without gravity into the gravel trap.

From the first laps, the times are very fast and Marc Márquez improves his best time from this morning by a few hundredths in his 2nd flying lap: 1'39.812.

The difference with the FP1 is that Jack Miller doesn't give up and is even preparing to get the best of Marc Márquez when he lost control of his Ducati GP 19 and made a minor mistake at turn 13.

The latter continues his effort and drops to 1'39.497, which nevertheless remains a tenth slower than his time achieved last year in the same session.

The first run ends with a top 10 made up of Marc Márquez 4 tenths ahead of Jack Miller, Cal Crutchlow, Andrea Dovizioso, Takaaki Nakagami, Danilo Petrucci, Franco Morbidelli, Karel Abraham, Álex Rins and Aleix Espargaó.

We then find Johann zarco in 11th position ahead Miguel Oliveira, Fabio Quartararo and Valentino Rossi while Maverick Vinales precede Jorge Lorenzo for 18th position.

On the restart, the Yamaha rider, however, restored the situation by entering the top 10 whileAlex Rins jumped to provisional 3rd place.

At the bottom of the ranking, we provisionally find Jorge Lorenzo et Pol Espargaro, which is above all a sign of a strong improvement inHafiz Syahrin, usually by far the last, but today in a much better pace, only 1,3 seconds behind Marc Márquez.

A quarter of an hour from the checkered flag, Valentino Rossi benefits from Andrea Dovizioso in his sights and moves up to 6th in the provisional ranking. Nice rise of Joan Mir also, which takes 4th place, while the greatest improvement is to be credited to Maverick Vinales who, although angry, places his Yamaha in 3rd position.

The hierarchy is then composed of Marc Marquez, still 4/10 ahead Jack Miller, Maverick Vinales, Andrea Dovizioso, Joan Mir, Álex Rins, Cal Crutchlow, Valentino Rossi, Takaaki Nakagami and Fabio Quartararo.

The last run begins with the improvement of Franco Morbidelli which positions itself 5th then 2nd at only 6/1000 from Marc Márquez, before Alex Espargaró who placed his Aprilia in the top 3.

When Miguel Oliveira brilliantly entered the top 10 then reached 8th place, Cal Crutchlow achieves provisional pole position in 1'39.346. However, it is far from over, and Rins, Rossi and Miller light the first sectors in red 3 minutes from the end of the session.

El Diablo, Fabio Quartararo, then comes out of his box and achieves the 2nd beat, just before Jack Miller improves Crutchlow's time to 1'39.190.

A minute later, Andrea Dovizioso turns out to be, for 9 thousandths, the fastest in 1'39.181.

There is one minute left when Maverick Vinales is positioned 3rd and the last seconds will not change the lead in a ranking where we find no less than 21 drivers in the same second.

Marc Márquez finished 8th, but did not put on a new tire for the last run.

See you tomorrow at 14:50 p.m. for FP3...

MotoGP Argentinian Grand Prix, FP2 classification:

Credit ranking: MotoGP.com