Marquez has won the last three races in Aragon and started this year’s race weekend with a full 1.6 seconds ahead of FP1.
He finished fourth in the afternoon without bothering to put on a new soft tire and improve in the closing stages, and FP2 pacemaker Maverick Vinales was still 1.2 seconds behind Marquez’s FP1 benchmark.
“We know that it is not an isolated incident with Marc Marquez,” said Miller, who was the strongest Ducati rider in sixth place on Friday. “He sure has one more in him. But it was impressive.
“I came in, all high fives with my boys and I looked at the screen and they said, ‘Ah, it’s good’. I looked at the screen and saw that the king was two seconds later and I thought,” Well? You say this is good? “It hurts.”
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LCR Honda’s Cal Crutchlow, the seventh fastest, added: “Right now, no driver can use Marc as a reference. It’s pointless.
“You have to take this [1.6s gap in FP1] than reality and try to do your own job and not think about it. Even though Marc is the same manufacturer – it’s difficult because he’s my reference and I can see his data – you have to forget that.
“You have to do your own thing and find your own feeling about the bike and that’s it.”
Cal Crutchlow, Team LCR Honda
Photo by: Gold and Goose / LAT Images
Fabio Quartararo, who got very close to Marquez at Misano last week, pointed out that Marquez is still prone to the occasional mistake like the one that cost him a likely win in Texas earlier in the season.
“He’s at a pace that no one can match this weekend, but that doesn’t mean he can’t make the same mistake he did in Austin,” said the Petronas Yamaha rider.
“In the end we think about doing our best job. I think we don’t have to look at Marc. He’s a different category this weekend, we saw this morning that he was really fast.
“We saw that Misano wasn’t a track for him and he won and I think this track is the best for the Honda and for him. He can do 100 percent of himself and we saw that he really is was fast.
“We’ll see it over the weekend, but our goal is not to beat Marc, but to have a good race, learn a lot from the top drivers and try to come back home with a few points.”
Vinales, the only driver to come within two seconds of Marquez in the first race, commented: “The reality is he is one second ahead; it doesn’t matter whether it’s morning or afternoon.
“Now he’s a second ahead and had a really good rhythm. Now we have to close the gap. So he’s put in the lap, we have to close the gap.”
“Today was definitely a good day for us because we are becoming more consistent with the first, second and third during practice.
“That’s the most important thing. Sure, he has an advantage at the moment, but it’s only Friday and we have to work to close the gap.”
Additional reporting from Garcia Casanova and Oriol Puigdemont
Maverick Vinales, Yamaha Factory Racing
Photo by: Gold and Goose / LAT Images