Quartararo beats team-mate Morbidelli to top FP2 at Brno

Factory Ducati rider Danilo Petrucci set the initial pace in FP2 with a 1m58.583s, though this was quickly beaten by KTM’s Pol Espargaro with a 1m57.583s.

Championship leader Fabio Quartararo deposited the factory KTM man with a 1m57.564s, before Joan Mir leaped up to top spot on the Suzuki with a 1m57.445s.

This stood as the benchmark until the closing six minutes, when most of the field opted for a time attack on soft rubber.

Morbidelli blitzed the pack with a 1m56.509s, and this lap would remain intact until after the checkered flag, when team-mate Quartararo started lighting up the timing screens.

Quartararo was repeatedly caught on camera visibly angry, and was shaking his head after firing in the 1m56.502s lap which put him into top spot at the end of the session.

Tech3’s Miguel Oliveira completed the top three, 0.048s off top spot at a KTM circuit does come armed with recent data of courtesy of a private test with Dani Pedrosa last month.

Avintia’s Johann Zarco leaped up to fourth late on to end the day as top Ducati runner, with Maverick Vinales fifth on the works Yamaha.

Mir was shuffled back to sixth ahead of Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaro, while his KTM-mounted brother Pol was a further 0.018s adrift in eighth.

FP1 pacesetter Takaaki Nakagami was ninth and top Honda runner on the year-old LCR RC213V, with Pramac Ducati’s Jack Miller completing the top 10 ahead of Brad Binder in 11th on the KTM.

Neither works team Ducati riders currently occupy a provisional Q2 place, with Petrucci heading Andrea Dovizioso in 14th – the latter not bettering his time from FP1.

Valentino Rossi was 12th on the sister works team Yamaha ahead of the still-injured Suzuki of Alex Rins, with Alex Marquez 16th on the Honda after suffering a technical issue early in the session.

Marc Marquez’s stand-in Stefan Bradl once again propped up the field, some 1.922s off the pace as he gears up for his first MotoGP race in almost a year.

Pramac’s Francesco Bagnaia was absent from FP2 while undergoing checks in hospital on a fractured knee suffered in a crash in FP1.

He will sit out the rest of the Czech GP weekend and will be out of action at next week’s Austrian GP.

Czech Republic MotoGP – FP2 results

position	riders	team	gap
1	Fabio Quartararo	Petronas Yamaha	1m56.502s
2	Franco Morbidelli	Petronas Yamaha	0.007s
3	Miguel Oliveira	Tech3 KTM	0.048s
4	Johann Zarco	Avintia Ducati	0.081s
5	Maverick Vinales	Yamaha	0.166s
6	Joan Mir	Suzuki	0.374s
7	Alex Espargaro	Aprilia	0.539s
8th	Pol Espargaro	KTM	0.557s
9	Takaaki Nakagami	LCR Honda	0.571s
10	Jack Miller	Pramac Ducati	0.607s
11	Brad Binder	KTM	0.777s
12	Valentino Rossi	Yamaha	0.788s
13	Alex Rins	Suzuki	0.852s
14	Danilo Petrucci	Ducati	1.118s
15	Andrea Dovizioso	Ducati	1.133s
16	Alex Marquez	Honda	1.186s
17	Tito Rabat	Avintia Ducati	1.275s
18	Cal Crutchlow	LCR Honda	1.363s
19	BradleySmith	Aprilia	1.659s
20	Iker Lecuona	Tech3 KTM	1.876s
21	Stefan Bradl	Honda	1,922s