Contrary to expectations, the indications collected in yesterday’s Sprint do not direct the entire MotoGP grid towards the medium rear tire for this afternoon’s Catalan Grand Prix, because the soft has shown that it can last longer than expected.
The last opportunity to try to draw some indications in this sense was the Warm-Up, which shuffled the cards a bit compared to what we saw yesterday afternoon. The fastest, for example, was Enea Bastianini, who didn’t shine in the Sprint, but stopped the clock with an average time of 1’39″505.
The Ducati rider preceded Pedro Acosta by just 27 thousandths of a second, who on Friday had already shown that he had an excellent pace with the medium tyre, so this morning he instead preferred to mount the soft on his GasGas Tech3, but it was a who was already about ten rounds old when the checkered flag fell. The rookie’s pace therefore seemed quite interesting.
In third position is Maverick Vinales, who finally struck a chord with his Aprilia after a rather anonymous weekend so far, just as his partner Aleix Espargaro was the star of Saturday with the pole position and the Sprint victory. The latter however remained rather behind this morning, because he was actually 22nd at 1″5, but he was among those who used the most used tyres: on average he had 12 laps at the end of the session.
Going back to scroll through the rankings, between fourth and eighth position there is a good group of Ducatis, led by the Gresini Racing GP23 entrusted to Marc Marquez, who pays 111 thousandths and precedes world leader Jorge Martin by just 1 . Then following us we find Franco Morbidelli, Alex Marquez and Fabio Di Giannantonio, almost all on the medium tire (the indication was missing for the two Gresini riders).
Space in the top 10 also for Yamaha, with Fabio Quartararo who set the ninth fastest time, but half a second behind, also on the medium tyre. In his wake is Raul Fernandez, who will start from the front row again today and will try to make up for the Sprint’s fall that occurred when he was in command.
The same goes for Pecco Bagnaia, who was rather late this morning with his Ducati: the world champion, who literally threw away the success of the Sprint on the last lap, occupies 14th place at seven tenths of a second with his Ducati, despite riding a medium tire that had the same rpm as Bastianini’s. In front of him, it would seem that he was going for the soft Jack Millers, given that his KTM was equipped with two used ones.
You then have to go down to 17th position to find the first of the Hondas, which once again is the one with Johann Zarco’s advanced aerodynamic package. The Frenchman, however, once again pays nine tenths and Joan Mir and Luca Marini are not far behind him.
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