Tony Arbolino is the quickest on Friday ahead of John McPhee and Aron Canet. On FP1 on wet track the best is Nakarin Atiratphuvapat.
FP1 took place on a very wet track, with Nakarin Atiratphuvapat who managed to register the best time. On the contrary, FP2 started on an almost completely dry track, but the riders had to stop halfway through the round because the rain came back. Tony Arbolino registered the best overall time. This was a difficult day for Moto3, as the young riders already had to deal with Sepang’s unpredictable time.
This first day at Sepang started on a wet track, a difficult situation due to the heavy rain that fell during the night. The best registered time is 2:25.290, a good 13 seconds more than the track’s record time and the unpredictable name on top is that of Nakarin Atiratphuvapat. The young rider is a Thailand’s native and he managed to close FP1 1st ahead of Aron Canet, and the Italians Marco Bezzecchi and Tony Arbolino. The local rider Adam Norrodin closed FP1 5th. Two wild cards stood out in this occasion, Apiwath Wongthananon and Makar Yurchenko: the first got a nice 9th place while the second suffered a violent crash and finished on 26th. But let’s not forget about Niccolò Antonelli, who came back on track two weeks after he broke a vertebra and with a small injury on his foot. He still managed to register an excellent time that gave him the 14th place. The current World Championship leader Jorge Martín only managed to get the 16th place.
FP1 ranking
The second round of FP started in much better conditions and times were considerably shorter compared to FP1. After a few minutes, here it comes the first crash: Wongthananon fell and had to be taken out on a gurney because he seemed to be in a lot of pain due to an injured leg. Halfway through the round, Tony Arbolino temporarily took the lead with a nice 2:14.227, followed by John McPhee, Aron Canet and Jorge Martín. But some minutes after, the rain started falling again on Sepang and all riders had to go back to their pit lanes. Toward the end of the round, only Atiratphuvapat, Ramírez and Vietti decided to try a few laps in these difficult conditions but they could only register very long times and the ranking didn’t change. The Marinelli Snipers rider managed to get the 1st place with the best absolute time of the day (while his teammate Yurchenko had to spend FP2 in the pit lane because of the crash during FP1).
FP2 ranking
