The penultimate showdown of the 2014 MotoGP season got underway at Sepang in Malaysia, as the first two Free Practice sessions led the way to this weekend’s race. The morning practice took place in dry conditions, while FP2 was first stopped due to heavy rain, and later restarted with wet tires shod bikes.
Dani Pedrosa was the fastest rider of the morning with a 2’01.379 lap, followed by a very fast Aleix Espargaro, only 14 thousandths of a second slower and Jorge Lorenzo for third, 0.037 adrift the Repsol rider. Marc Marquez was 4th-fastest in FP1, followed by Stefan Bradl.
Here comes the rain, lap times down the drain
Things changed in the afternoon, as the tropical rain soaked the Sepang circuit, forcing the riders to pay a visit to the pit lane and jump on the second bikes equipped with wet tires. The downpour was rather short and despite the heavy rain, the track started to dry out pretty quickly, but the lap times went down significantly.
FP2 saw Lorenzo topping the time sheet, but his 2’14.503 was obviously nowhere near the morning session laps. Marquez was second, 0.242 adrift, followed by Dani Pedrosa, Andrea Dovizioso and again Aleix Espargaro.
Still, since the dry FP times are the ones that count, the Friday time sheets look the same like the order at the end of Free Practice 1. Friday’s top 10 was complete with Rossi, Dovizioso, Crutchlow, Hernandez and Pol Espargaro. Andrea Iannone was involved in a crash towards the end of FP2 and he could be seen limping and holding his left arm. No news on his condition came from either, but we do hope he’s well.
So far we’ve seen a lot of trouble at Turn 15, the hairpin-like left-hander before the start/finish line, but maybe we’re all lucky enough to not have riders injured in crashes this time. Marquez has one more chance to make MotoGP history. If he qualifies first on the grid, he will be the first rider in history with 13 pole position in one season. And there is still Valencia after this...
It was yesterday three years ago at Sepang when Marco “Super Sic” Simoncelli tragically lost his life after he came off his bike in front of Colin Edwards and his good friend Valentino Rossi, who were unable to react and collided with him. Even though nothing is known at the moment on the commemoration of Super Sic, we can expect something at least from Rossi, who saw Simoncelli almost like his younger brother.
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