Lorenzo & Marquez Lead the Way After FP2

Aug 7, 2015
3 min read

Jorge Lorenzo came out of the blocks swinging in FP1 as he relaunches his bid for the title after a difficult previous two races.

The Spaniard continued to lead the way in the United States with a 1:32.860, but he was only 0.003s quicker than Marc Marquez; the pair were, at one stage, sitting on identical times. Making things that bit more interesting was that both set those times on the hard rear tyre.

Adding to the intrigue is their situations in the championship fight; Lorenzo sits 13 points behind Valentino Rossi, whilst Marquez 65 behind. The Yamaha rider's aim is simply to beat his team-mate. Marquez' aim is to beat both of the factory M1s. All of this points towards an absolutely titanic fight come Sunday, because both have to beat Rossi, but will want to beat each other too.

Lorenzo's long run pace, and the fact that he was able to still set quick times on used rubber do point towards a situation where if he gets to the front he'll run away.

It remains to be seen what Rossi can do. He eluded to tyre wear issues in FP1, and spent the first half of FP2 evaluating the hard rear/medium front combination. He put on a medium rear towards the end and only went 9th quickest. That's slower than the Tech 3 Yamaha of Bradley Smith, who was 7th fastest on the same compound. He'll need to dig deep in FP3 tomorrow to find a qualifying setting that will put him on a par with Lorenzo, and it won't be until FP4 that we'll see if the team have found anything with race set-up.

Andrea Dovizioso completed the top three, and looked a lot happier on track this session. The Ducati rider clocked a lap of 1:33.155, which was set on the soft rear it must be noted. But if they can use that to full effect come qualifying, then they could definitely cause a headache in the early stages of the 27-lap Grand Prix. Team-mate Iannone was 4th, but lacked a little in consistency to the top three.

Cal Crutchlow jumped up to 5th at the end of the 45-minute session and is looking like a contender for top Satellite honours this weekend.

Pol Espargaro will be keen to deny the Briton that, and he is lucky to still have that opportunity after suffering a massive high-side at turn 13 in the final minutes of the session. Though gingerly, he did get to his feet and made it back to the pits under his own steam. He ended the day with a best time of 1:33.362 and 6th on the leaderboard.

Scott Redding has slipped under the radar a little today, but has been putting in some very encouraging laps. 13th in FP1 was somewhat unrepresentative, and he proved that with the 8th quickest time of the second session. In fact the Marc VDS rider was just a tenth behind Dani Pedrosa. Redding's season has been an absolute nightmare, the bike causing him more problems than any of the other RC213V riders. He'll be hoping to turn this new-found pace into a strong result come Sunday.

The stop/start nature of the Indianapolis road circuit has really highlighted the pitfalls of the new bikes on the grid: the Suzuki GSX-RR and the Aprilia RS-GP. Suzuki ended the day 13th and 15th on the time sheets, whilst Aprilia 20th and 21st. Stefan Bradl, who is only in his second ever session on the RS-GP impressively outpaced Alvaro Bautista.

Toni Elias rounded out the field, as you'd expect, but given that the Spaniard hasn't ridden a MotoGP bike since 2012, not least a new RC213V-RS, to finish just 1.3s adrift of Alex De Angelis is admirable. Elias' session didn't get off to the best of starts when he was knocked off his bike by Yonny Hernandez at turn two.

FP2 Top 10:

1st Jorge Lorenzo, Movistar Yamaha MotoGP, 1:32.860

2nd Marc Marquez, Repsol Honda Team, 1:32.863

3rd Andrea Dovizioso, Ducati Team, 1:33.155

4th Andrea Iannoe, Ducati Team, 1:33.166

5th Cal Crutchlow, CWM LCR Honda, 1:33.186

6th Pol Espargaro, Monster Yamaha Tech 3, 1:33.362

7th Dani Pedrosa, Repsol Honda Team, 1:33.377

8th Scott Redding, EG 0,0 Marc VDS Honda, 1:33.443

9th Bradley Smith, Monster Yamaha Tech 3, 1:33.474

10th Valentino Rossi, Movistar Yamaha MotoGP, 1:33.532

Full results can be found here: http://resources.motogp.com/files/results/2015/INP/MotoGP/FP2/CombinedPracticeTimes.pdf?v1_107f1495