Hot on the heels of last weekend’s Emilia Romagna round, the ‘flyaway’ stage of the 2024 MotoGP World Championship kicks off with the Indonesian Grand Prix at Mandalika.
Despite Jorge Martin losing out on victory to Enea Bastianini on the last lap in Misano, Francesco Bagnaia’s seventh DNF of the season handed the Pramac rider a 24-point title lead over the reigning champion.
Bastianini begins the final seven rounds holding third in the world championship, 59 points behind Martin but just one ahead of 2025 replacement Marc Marquez.
Martin won last year’s Mandalika Sprint race to briefly take the 2023 title lead, before a mistake while leading the grand prix handed the initiative back to Bagnaia.
Aprilia’s Maverick Vinales and Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo joined race winner Bagnaia on the 2023 Indonesian Grand Prix podium.
FP1 starts at 10:45am local time (3:45am BST) with Practice - which decides the top ten riders with direct access to Qualifying 2 - beginning at 3pm (8am BST).
That's all from us for Friday, but make sure to keep your eyes on Crash.net for the latest from the Mandalika paddock.
Thanks for your company and join us again on Saturday for more MotoGP action.
MotoGP FP2 begins at 3:10am BST, followed by qualifying at 3:50am. The sprint is at 8am.
Read the full report from Practice at the 2024 MotoGP Indonesian GP here.
Di Giannantonio has crashed at Turn 16, but he is in Q2 regardless.
Enea Bastianini comes out on top in second practice with a new lap record of 1m29.630s.
The top 10 going to Q2 are:
Bagnaia makes a big recovery job and jumps up to third with a 1m29.712s.
Alex Marquez crashes behind Bagnaia at Turn 16.
Bagnaia completes this lap and is ninth, but he needs more to be safe.
Bagnaia is pretty far off through sector one. 0.3s away from the best.
And indeed, both Marquez brothers are now behind Bagnaia as they start this flying lap.
Alex Marquez has ended up behind Bagnaia anyway, and it looks like Marc will also be there soon.
Bagnaia had both of the Gresini riders behind him as he left his box, but pulled over in pitlane to let them go by. Lots of riders will be looking to use Bagnaia as a reference in these last laps.
This is a big seven minutes coming up for Bagnaia. He is not safe at all in ninth and he cannot afford to be in Q1 given how his championship defence is looking right now.
The last sector allowed Bastianini to get that lap sorted. One of the bigger braking zones on the circuit and one where you need a lot of confidence given how low the grip seems to be there.
Bastianini now takes over at the top of the timesheets with a 1m29.639s.
Bagnaia improves to ninth, but he's 0.578s shy of championship leader Martin with just under 10 minutes to go.
Binder has crashed at Turn 10.
Acosta is in the 1m29s now too with a 1m29.979s.
Martin has 0.3s in his pocket over the rest of the field. Meanwhile, Bagnaia's latest lap was only good enough for 10th.
Martin has blasted the lap record on his second lap with a 1m29.670s!
That was the best time of the day so far. Got to feel the lap record will go by the time the chequered flag comes out in just under 13 minutes' time.
Martin goes top with a 1m30.317s on his first time attack lap in this phase of the session.
Espargaro has crashed at Turn 16 again! He's ok and back into pitlane.
It's pretty tight out there. Just 0.288s covers the top 10 right now, while the top 17 are split by 0.956s.
Twenty minutes to go. Here is the top 10:
