After Franco Morbidelli of Petronas SRT had unsealed a third engine from his allocation for the season after problems in FP1, he set the benchmark lap at the beginning of the evening session with 1: 55.750 minutes.
This was beaten by Qatar GP poleman Francesco Bagnaia with 1: 55.407 minutes on the factory Ducati, before championship leader Maverick Vinales was ahead with 1: 55.180 minutes. The Yamaha rider would be overtaken by Bagnaia’s follow-up tour, the Italian setting a 1: 54.074 minutes that would remain untouched for the next 20 minutes.
Almost 15 minutes before the end, Pramac rookie Jorge Martin finally pushed his Ducati stable colleague from the top spot – but only for a few seconds when Suzuki’s Alex Rins went under 1:54 for the first time on Friday with 1: 53.969 minutes. At this point the session had developed into a dummy qualifying as the FP2 times will almost certainly be decisive for who goes straight into Q2 on Saturday.
Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo prevailed ahead of Rins with 1: 53.926 minutes later – but not without shaking his head on the main straight.
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FP1 pacesetter Aleix Espargaro was the next to fire in a session topper. The Aprilia rider led his RS-GP to an extremely encouraging time of 1: 53.646 minutes. With less than eight minutes to go, Miller was supposed to dethrone Espargaro, but was fortunate enough to remain mounted after his Ducati almost threw him into the countryside at Turn 14.
But the Australian forcefully regrouped when he returned to the track to shoot in 1: 53.145 minutes to finish FP2 the fastest.
Factory Ducati team-mate Bagnaia jumped into second place 0.313 seconds behind, while Johann Zarco on his Pramac GP21 completed the top three. Quartararo finished fourth as the top Yamaha rider ahead of Pramacs Martin, while Espargaro was relegated to sixth place on the checkered flag.
Morbidelli has secured a provisional Q2 place in seventh ahead of Suzuki’s Rins, Vinales and Stefan Bradl – currently the only Honda driver in Q2. His LCR colleagues Takaaki Nakagami and Alex Marquez both suffered late falls and were left 15th and 16th behind SRT’s Valentino Rossi and Mir on the Suzuki in Q2.
I didn’t make it straight into Q2 last weekend and am facing the first part of qualifying again with lap time improvements that are unlikely in the hotter conditions of FP3 on Saturday afternoon.
Pol Espargaro was only 17th on his factory Honda ahead of Brad Binder from KTM, who was 11th place as the best-placed KTM rider, almost three tenths behind team-mate Miguel Oliveira on Friday.