Marco Bezzecchi completed a clean-sweep of Friday running at Assen for the Dutch TT ahead of Jorge Martin, while Marc Marquez will run in Q1 after crashing late on.
The vast majority of the 60-minute outing was as usual dedicated to finding a decent setting for a race distance, Fabio Quartararo leading the way early on for Yamaha before Maverick Vinales took over the top spot on his Aprilia.
The peak time continued to fall though as the runners and riders slowly began to switch their attentions to securing a spot within Saturday’s Q2 session, Martin banging in a 1:32.332s to close to within a tenth of Bezzecchi’s FP1 effort.
The Italian was soon back at the head of the field with a 1:32.254s though – a time just 0.008s away from his morning gambit – though unsatisfied he managed to find more time on his final run to clock a 1:32.063s, an attempt good enough to secure him Friday honours and the first guaranteed passage into the pole shootout.
Double Germany victor Martin ensured it would be a satellite Ducati 1-2 heading into Saturday as he lapped 0.130s adrift of Bezzecchi, while Jack Miller showed impressive one-lap performance for KTM once again with the third-best time just clear of Francesco Bagnaia on his factory Ducati.
Maverick Vinales looked comfortable on his Aprilia as he secured the fifth-fastest lap of the day just ahead of Quartararo, the Frenchman looking better so far in the Netherlands as he lapped only 0.278s away from Bezzecchi’s benchmark.
Aleix Espargaro was seventh on the other Aprilia ahead of Brad Binder on the sister factory KTM, while Luca Marini and Alex Marquez secured the final two direct-to-Q2 slots for VR46 and Gresini respectively.
Johann Zarco narrowly missed out having failed to put together a decent lap at the end of P2, the Pramac man ending the day 11th just under a tenth-of-a-second away from Marquez, while RNF Aprilia had an encouraging outing in 12th and 13th for Raul Fernandez and Miguel Oliveira.
Takaaki Nakagami slipped back in the afternoon after running seventh in P1, though the Japanese was still Honda’s fastest pilot in 14th overall – albeit 0.872s away from the top spot – with Marc Marquez only 19th having crashed out while trying to improve late on.
Franco Morbidelli also has work to do down in 16th on his Yamaha as he lapped nearly eight-tenths away from team-mate Quartararo.
Iker Lecuona continued to make progress in his second event of the year for the factory Honda squad as he lapped just a couple tenths away from the marque’s test rider Stefan Bradl, the duo 21st and 22nd overall just clear of GasGas’ Jonas Folger and behind Aprilia wild-card Lorenzo Savadori.
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