MARQUEZ: 3 MILLISECONDS WORTH OF Q2
Alex Marquez set the tenth-quickest time in the combined times of today’s two free practice sessions for round five of the 2023 MotoGP World Championship, taking place at Le Mans, France. The Spaniard, who also had an unfortunate crash at turn seven, did a great job in jumping back on the bike and maintain the good feeling. His 1’31.509secs lap-time was – just barely – enough to get direct access once again to Q2.
Fabio Di Giannantonio also had a crash, at turn three, this morning, while in the afternoon he worked hard to find the best feeling with his Desmosedici machine #49. The Italian finished the day in 17th place and will battle tomorrow for his spot into Q2 with Marini and Quartararo as his biggest rivals.
10th – ALEX MARQUEZ #73 (1’31.508)
“I’m very happy with how we reacted to the crash, which was quite a tough one. We stayed calm on a track where I’m not always quick and we managed to get into Q2, which was the most important thing after all. There’s a lot to work on and the crash surely impacted on the weekend programme we had for the bike. A thank you goes to the team because they worked incredibly well. The crash was my fault, the feeling with the medium compound at the front-end wasn’t the best but I chose to keep pushing and lost the front.”
17th – FABIO DI GIANNANTONIO #49 (1’32.311s)
“It was a complicated Friday; we worked a lot even though the morning crash has limited us a little bit. We started from the base setup found in Jerez, which we were happy with, and we’re trying to see if it can work here, too. Right now we’re losing a lot of ground in T3 and T4 and tomorrow it’ll be important to work well in FP3 in order to play our cards right in qualifying.”
