The MotoGP riders were not at all lucky. To the already complicated conditions of yesterday, with the new asphalt of Motorland Aragon slippery and dirty, was added the rain that fell during the night, which in fact made the Warm-Up of the Aragon Grand Prix useless and in fact nullified the operation of cleaning the track in the starting area that had been done in the late afternoon yesterday in response to the complaints of the riders (several had risked, finding themselves literally sideways at the start).
With the race set to be dry, the 10 minutes available this morning were mainly used to regain a bit of feeling and start drying the asphalt. Among other things, the session was brought forward by five minutes to allow for practice starts at the end of the session, precisely for the purpose of “cleaning” the grid, with the hope that last night’s rain has not ruined all these efforts.
It is clear, therefore, that the Warm-Up classification has a completely relative value. And this is demonstrated by the fact that the dominator of the weekend so far, the eight-time world champion Marc Marquez, decided to do only one lap and then brought his Gresini Racing Ducati back to the garage without even getting a time.
In the end, the fastest was the leader of the World Championship Jorge Martin, who on the very last lap pushed his Ducati of Prima Pramac Racing up to a time of 2’02″388, preceding by 192 thousandths the KTM of Jack Miller. From third down the gaps then start to be rather heavy, because Augusto Fernandez is just under a second behind with his GasGas Tech3 and precedes by 9 thousandths the Ducati GP24 of Enea Bastianini.
After yesterday’s very complicated Sprint, with the big difficulties suffered on the front (probably related to the tire) that cost him the world championship lead, Pecco Bagnaia this morning set the fifth fastest time, 1″1 behind his rival in the title race. Following him, in sixth and seventh position are the two Hondas of Johann Zarco and Luca Marini, who took advantage of the wet track to climb the standings.
The top 10 is then completed by Marco Bezzecchi, Miguel Oliveira and Pedro Acosta. After the great comeback in yesterday’s Sprint, Fabio Quartararo instead took care to stay out of trouble and finished 18th at over 3″6.
Finally, it should be noted that, as proof of the very critical conditions of the asphalt, after having analyzed the tires at the end of the Sprint, Michelin decided to withdraw the soft rear from the allocation in view of today’s long race. It should be said, however, that most of the riders were probably already directed to use the medium.
#MotoGP #Aragon #wet #track #ruins #WarmUp #practice #starts
