MotoGP Argentina FP2: The acrobat Marquez alone in the world but Rabat creates the feat! Dovizioso stuck…

Of the two uncertainties that fueled the conversations this morning, namely the grip of the new surface and the weather, at least one has really dissipated: it rained during Moto2!

This having since stopped, we will have to know how to take advantage of every minute to stay and enter the top 10 at the end of this first day, tomorrow being expected on a wet track.

As for the level of grip and times, the Moto3s actually proved to be slower than in 2017, unlike the Moto2s this morning, while the MotoGPs are in the same times as last season: in these conditions, it is difficult to draw any lessons from these contradictory data.

At the start of this second Argentine MotoGP session, the sky is now partly very cloudy but the track remains dry, the wind has picked up and the air/track temperatures are 24° and 34°.

#ArgentinaGP MotoGP	2017	2018
FP1	1'40.356 Maverick Vinales	1'40.303 Dani Pedrosa (See here)
FP2	1'39.477 Maverick Vinales	1'39.395 Marc Marquez
FP3	1'39.772 Cal Crutchlow
FP4	1'50.042 Marc Marquez
Qualification 1	1'49.235 Dani Pedrosa
Qualification 2	1'47.512 Marc Marquez
Warm Up	1'39.620 Maverick Vinales
Course	Vinales, Rossi, Crutchlow
All time lap record	1'37.683 Marc Marquez 2014

At the opening of the track, it's this time Esteve Rabat who leads the MotoGP pack.

The vast majority of drivers chose a medium rear tire with the exception ofalex rins et Marc Marquez (tender) and, in contrast, Andrea Iannone et Cal Crutchlow (hard). At the front, the majority goes to the medium even if Zarco, Simeon, Rins, Miller and Bautista chose the soft one.

These choices seem to show that we are not going to waste a minute to take advantage of the dry track, in case the rain comes back to water Termas de Rio Hondo.

After the first flying round, it is Valentino Rossi who took command, in 1'43.034.
In the next passage, we don't pretend and Marc Marquez recorded a 1'40.873, only 1/10 off his best time this morning!

After 7 minutes, the “change of grip” flag is waved and almost everyone returns to their box.

The hierarchy is then composed of Marc Marquez, Scott Redding, Johann Zarco, Pol Espargaro, Hafizh Syahrin, Valentino Rossi, Danilo Petrucci, Bradley Smith, Jorge Lorenzo et Alvaro Bautista, but no changes took place in the top 10 established this morning.

Only Bradley Smith, Jorge Lorenzo et Karel Abraham remain on the track for a while before returning to their garage.

30 minutes from the end of the session, Andrea Iannone returns to the track, still on slicks, under the watchful eye of the other drivers through monitors. The Suzuki rider only makes one lap before returning, while Johann Zarco, Franco Morbidelli et Tom Luthi go out to make up their own minds.

7 minutes later, after seeing that the track was dry, almost everyone left for a few laps.

Marc Márquez (medium/soft) is immediately in the rhythm and improves his time by a few hundredths. During the next loop, he set the best time in 140.498.

Hafiz Syahrin stands out again by placing himself in 2nd place: we can't wait to see him in the wet! A quarter of an hour from the end, the young Malaysian was overtaken by Cal Crutchlow et Maverick Vinales, but we can say that it impresses!

In the meantime, Marc Márquez, which plays a little with Maverick Vinales, improves further and achieves the best time of the day, in 1'40.285.

A few moments later, Valentino Rossi jumped from 16th to 2nd position, whileAndrea Dovizioso does not seem to want to take any risks and is sailing in last place in the provisional ranking.

10 minutes from the checkered flag, Valentino Rossi continues his effort and lights the first 3 sectors in red but prefers to return to his box rather than achieve a possible provisional pole position.

Esteve Rabat enters the Top 10, ejecting at least temporarily Jorge Lorenzo.

After having graced us with a new acrobatic trick, the final packaging sees Marc Márquez achieve an impressive 1'39.395, thus relegating the rest of the field to more than a second before Cal Crutchlow failed to reduce the gap to 4 tenths.

At the last minute, Scott Redding also enters the top 10.

This afternoon, the big loser is called Andrea Dovizioso, last of the session but above all not present in the top 10. He and Jorge Lorenzo, figures respectively 15 and 16th in the combined.

Combined: