World Champion Francesco Bagnaia tops Day 1 at the Malaysian Grand Prix following a Ducati GP24 dominated Practice session.
The Italian led title rival Jorge Martin by just +0.050 seconds, however, further back, gaps significantly increased as the GP24’s dominated most of the field. It seems Ducati’s current bike is about four tenths a lap faster than the rest of MotoGP.
Enea Bastianini completed the Top 3 with Maverick Vinales being the first non-Ducati rider in P4. Alex Marquez seemingly continues his good run of form from Thailand and rounded out the Top 5.
Slight drama hit Jorge Martin late in the final session of the day when the Spaniard, going for another fast lap, lost the front in Turn 1 ending his Practice five minutes earlier than anticipated.
His crash brought outthe yellow flags ruining quite a few laps of some of the usual Top 10 runners resulting in a bit of a shuffled Q1 grid.
Jack Miller was the only Pierer Mobility bike to make it directly into Q2 as teammate Binder struggled early on after a crash Turn 4 and Acosta was unable to match the Top 10 pace in the late stages of the session.
With KTM mostly out of the picture for a direct qualification for Q2, Yamaha stepped in and completed what is the team’s best practice Friday of the season. Both, Fabio Quartararo and Alex Rins, will be in Q2 tomorrow.
