Marco Bezzecchi secures provisional pole after dominating second practice in Assen

Marco Bezzecchi secured a provisional pole position after finishing a practice double at the Dutch TT in Assen, where Marc Marquez suffered yet another crash.

Marco Bezzecchi finished Friday’s running at Assen for the Dutch TT ahead of Jorge Martin, while Marc Marquez, who suffered a crash late in the session is going to start in Q1.

The VR46 Ducati rider Bezzecchi improved on his time from the morning session to set a new benchmark of one minute 32.063secs, placing him 0.130s ahead of Jorge Martin (Pramac Ducati), while Australian Jack Miller made a major leap to slot into third on the Red Bull KTM in the one-hour afternoon run, finishing a further 0.025s behind.

Fabio Quartararo led the way early on for Yamaha until Maverick Vinales took over on his Aprilia to establish a good setting for a racing distance which took up the better part of the 60-minute session as usual.

However, as the riders and runners gradually turned their focus to securing a berth in Saturday’s Q2 session, the fastest times continued to drop. Martin clocked a 1:32.332s to get within a tenth of Bezzecchi’s FP1 effort.

The Italian quickly regained the advantage over the rest of the pack with a time of 1:32.254s, which was only 0.008s slower than his morning attempt. Unsatisfied, he still found extra time on his final run to clock a 1:32.063s, which earned him Friday honors and the first guaranteed spot in the pole shootout.

Martin, who lapped 0.130s behind Bezzecchi ensured that it would be a Ducati 1-2 going into Saturday. Jack Miller once again shown remarkable one-lap performance for KTM with the third-best time just ahead of Francesco Bagnaia on his factory Ducati.

Maverick Vinales, who led Quartararo by 0.278 seconds for the fifth-fastest lap of the day, looked confident in his Aprilia despite recent struggles. Quartararo has been doing better than expected in the Netherlands thus far.

Aleix Espargaro finished eighth on the second Aprilia ahead of Brad Binder on the sister factory KTM while Luca Marini and Alex Marquez secured the remaining two direct-to-Q2 spots for VR46 and Gresini, respectively.

Johann Zarco nearly missed out after failing to put together a strong lap at the end of P2. The Pramac rider finished the day in 11th place, just under a tenth of a second behind Marquez.

Raul Fernandez and Miguel Oliveira had a promising session for RNF Aprilia in 12th and 13th, respectively.

Takaaki Nakagami plummeted in the afternoon after finishing seventh in P1, but the Japanese driver was still Honda’s fastest in 14th overall – only 0.872 seconds behind the leader. Yamaha rider Franco Morbidelli has work to do to move up from 16th place as he ran roughly eight tenths slower than teammate Quartararo.

Marc Marquez was only 19th after colliding with the wall while trying to make up ground late on. Following his fifth crash of the season, the Repsol Honda rider was back after he withdrew from the German MotoGP last weekend after breaking his thumb during the morning warm-up.

Marquez, who also suffered a rib fracture in the incident didn’t help himself when he lost his grip and crashed in the final minutes of the afternoon session. He eventually went from 21st in practice one to 19th overall, 1.422s behind Bezzecchi.

In his second race of the year for the factory Honda team, Iker Lecuona continued to improve as he lapped just a few tenths slower than the factory test rider Stefan Bradl. The two riders finished the race 21st and 22nd overall, barely ahead of GasGas’ Jonas Folger and behind Aprilia wild card Lorenzo Savadori.

Augusto Fernandez was the first rider to crash in second practice. The rookie crashed the GASGAS Tech 3 KTM at Turn 1 marking his second crash of day after crashing during first practice as well.

2023 DUTCH MOTOGP, ASSEN FREE PRACTICE 2 RESULTS