Reigning champion Jorge Lorenzo was the fastest rider in the first two free practice sessions at Phillip Island in Australia.
With a new track surface, some record-breaking action was somehow expected, but Lorenzo's top time was 1m28s961, still some 3 tenths slower than Casey Stoner's 1m28s665 from 2008.
Marquez was the second-fastest and once more, one of the luckiest riders in MotoGP after a nasty crash at the Lukey Heights turn, out of which he made it unscathed. He was back on the track in 20 minutes or so and got the better of Alvaro Bautista, who was the third fastest on his GO&FUN Gresini machine.
Dani Pedrosa had a slower pace and only came in 4th. He however was forced to give up towards the end of the second session due to a loose engine bolt scraping the track in left turns.
Rossi completed the top 5, followed by Crutchlow and Smith. Stefan Bradl, who was deemed fit to race on Thursday was about 4 seconds slower than the pack and was declared unfit, so he sits out and hopes for a more complete recovery for the Motegi round.
The Lukey Heights is expected to deliver more crashes this weekend, as Hector Barbera also sampled the new Australian track after a slip-up and crash in almost the same place were Marquez went down.
Watch the video after the jump to see a riding guide to the Phillip Island track. The best pole belongs to Stoner, with the aforementioned time, while the fastest rider ever on the Oz track was Karel Abraham on a Ducati: he clocked 339.6 km/h (211.062 mph) in 2012.
Google News