The opening phases of FP2 were quite hectic, with the top athlete changing hands five times in the first 15 minutes.
Alex Rins set the benchmark with his Suzuki in 1: 34.050 minutes, which Tech 3 rookie Iker Lecuona quickly beat with 1: 33.998 minutes.
FP1 pacesetter Maverick Vinales continued his work on the hard rear tire on which he finished the opening session and shot to the top of the ranking with 1: 33.817 minutes before the Pol Espargaro factory KTM was ahead with 1: 33.769 minutes had.
Quartararo reduced the pace on his Petronas Yamaha to 1: 33.370 minutes, although Joan Mir on the sister Suzuki was even faster with 1: 33.236 minutes.
Rins and Quartararo returned as the session went into the second half, though Vinales re-established himself fastest with a 1: 32.928s with just over 14 minutes remaining on a hard rear tire with 23 laps.
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In the closing stages of the session, the timing screens began to glow as much of the field started timing attacks on fresh rubber.
After crashing into Turn 6 with 26 minutes remaining, Brad Binder led his KTM to 1: 32.920 minutes, four minutes from time, to be the fastest of them all.
However, it was short-lived as Morbidelli drove this lap time to 1: 32.367 minutes.
This was threatened by his team-mate Quartararo on his last lap, the Frenchman set the fastest time of the day with 1: 32.189 minutes and finished Friday as the fastest of all.
Morbidelli’s second fastest time was not surpassed by Espargaro on the KTM, while Lecuona continued to impress in fourth ahead of Valentino Rossi, who set his 1: 32.732 on the medium rather than the soft tire.
Vinales was pushed back to sixth place in the end, with Ducati’s Danilo Petrucci being the best Desmosedici runner in eighth place ahead of Binder and the Styrian GP winner Miguel Oliveira.
Aleix Espargaro even finished third in the final stages on his Aprilia, but finished the session in 10th place, beating Andrea Dovizioso – who seemed to be facing more technical drama – on the factory Ducati by 0.009 seconds.
No Suzuki made it into the top 10 in the combined times in 13th or 15th place, while Takaaki Nakagami was the fastest Honda rider on his one-year-old LCR motorcycle in 12th place.
Returning Francesco Baganaia finished 17th on his Pramac Ducati, followed by teammate Jack Miller, while Avintia’s Tito Rabat completed the field.