2023-10-20 04:53:54
The Austrian manufacturer KTM managed to get his two official drivers, the South African Brad Binder and the Australian Jack Miller in the first two practice positions for the official classification of the MotoGP Australian Grand Prix, which will be held on Saturday at the Phillip Island circuit.
Binder, with a time of 1:27.943 was the fastest of the categorywith 148 thousandths of a second ahead of his teammate Miller, in the final minutes of a training session in which he lived his last moments with intensity and which once again saw the world leader, the Italian Francesco ‘Pecco’ Bagnaia (Ducati), leave out Desmosedici GP23).
Before, on the positive side, it was possible to appreciate the intensity shown by his compatriot Fabio di Giannantonio (Ducati Desmosedici GP22), who seems to have made a leap in quality to achieve the seventh best time, among his compatriots Marc Bezzecchi (Ducati Desmosedici GP22) and Enea Bastianini (Ducati Desmosedici GP23). Like ‘Diggia’, on this occasion the Spanish Pol Espargaró (Gas Gas RC 16), also stood out for his performance, achieving the fourth fastest time, behind Jorge Martín (Ducati Desmosedici GP23), who had been the fastest by the morning.
Binder took advantage of the opportunity to quickly become the leader of the category, at the first opportunity, despite the fact that Martín had dominated with great authority in the morning, although the differences between the top ten finishers were just seven tenths of a second. After the South African and his first fastest lap, 1:29.385, there were a series of names in the category who had not yet managed to make the jump to the top ten positions, as in the case of the leader of the worldthe Italian ‘Pecco’ Bagnaia or the Spanish Marc Márquez (Honda RC 213 V), who in fact did not succeed in the end.
Y It didn’t take long for Márquez to star in his twenty-fifth fall of the seasonat the same point where he crashed in the morning, turn ten and, although he tried to make one of his famous saves, on this occasion he couldn’t and had to end up lifting the bike off the ground, with hardly any material damage. consideration, since the motorcycle turned on itself, but he had to push it to his workshop.
Meanwhile, Brad Binder continued to lead, now with just 63 thousandths of a second ahead of the Spanish Maverick Viñales (Aprilia RS-GP) and already with almost three tenths of a second over the Italian Marco Bezzecchi (Ducati Desmosedici GP22). Bezzecchi showed signs of being much more recovered from his clavicle fracture surgery that occurred the weekend before traveling to Lombok to compete in the Indonesian Grand Prix.
As the minutes passed, Binder ended up being surpassed, in the first instance, by Fabio di Giannantonio, one of the few riders whose future in MotoGP is not guaranteed and who is rumored to fill Marc Márquez’s place at Honda during 2024. The Italian He did not last long in the first position, because in his wake came the Frenchman Johann Zarco (Ducati Desmosedici GP23) to surpass him by 93 thousandths of a second, without at that time, with twenty minutes of the session still ahead, neither Márquez nor Bagnaia had guaranteed a place in the second direct classification.
Zarco did not enjoy much of that privileged position either, surpassed by the Spaniards Aleix Espargaró (Aprilia RS-GP) and Augusto Fernández (Gas Gas RC 16), who lapped half a second faster than the Frenchman, but in reality that had been the starting signal for the fight for the official classification. This was demonstrated when in the next lap Maverick Viñales overtook his teammate, but he was overtaken, in the first instance by Jorge Martín and shortly after by Johann Zarco and also Brad Binder. Marc Márquez, recovered from his fall, knew how to take Jorge Martín’s wheel to get into the second provisional classification with the fifth best time on that first lap, although he later dropped a couple of positions.
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Once again, in the final five minutes, Fabio di Giannantonio came to the fore by placing himself in Martín’s wake, without following any wheels, alone, but Maverick Viñales overtook both of them and from those moments the changes at the head of the table were almost constant. After Viñales arrived Binder, already in the last two minutes, in which the Márquez brothers, Alex and Marc, were fourteenth and fifteenth, with Bagnaia eighteenth to jump to eleventh place in a fast first lap and, when he still had the opportunity to improve his time and enter the second direct classification, he cut the pace.
Bagnaia literally blew the opportunity to fight for pole position in Australia being left out of it, as well as Marc Márquez, who was sixteenth, behind his brother Alex, with Alex Rins (Honda RC 213 V) twelfth, or the Frenchman Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha YZR M 1) seventeenth, among others.
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