Revised Saturday schedule announced at Phillip Island
This afternoon’s second free practice sessions for the MotoGP and Moto2 class were cancelled following a day plagued by gradually worsening weather conditions.
The morning began wet and windy, but the first practices got underway and the full 40 and 45 minutes for each was run. The Moto3 riders were able to run their second free practice, but by the time that had ended the track had grown even wetter and caused a delayed start to MotoGP FP2.
The session eventually got underway 45 minutes after it was supposed to, but no-one was in a rush to hit the track. Only six riders took to the 4.4km Australian circuit, Ducati’s Hector Barbera the fastest of them with a 1m51.958s which was some 11 seconds slower than Cal Crutchlow’s fastest time from FP1.
The red flag was flown once again just 13 minutes into FP2, a further half-hour delay followed before Race Direction took the decision to abandon the remainder of the second premier class session and the upcoming Moto2 FP2.
As a result, a new schedule for Saturday has been drafted up which sees practice start earlier in order to allow the MotoGP and Moto2 rider 15 extra minutes of track time to make up for the set-up time they lost today.
This is what the qualifying day timetable looks like at present in local time and UK time:
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Moto3 FP3 – 09:00-09:40 (23:00-23:40)
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MotoGP FP3 – 09:55-10:55 (23:55-00:55)
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Moto2 FP3 – 11:10-12:10 (01:10-02:10)
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Moto3 QP – 13:15-14:15 ( 03:35-04:15)
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MotoGP FP4 – 14:30-15:00 (04:30-05:00)
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MotoGP QP1 – 15:10-15:25 (05:10-05:25)
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MotoGP QP2 – 15:35-15:50 (05:35-05:50)
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Moto2 QP – 16:05-16:50 (06:05-06:50)
A second schedule has also been submitted which, should the weather require it, will see Moto3 FP3 start an hour later and the lunch break between Moto2 FP3 and Moto3 QP scrapped. A decision on which timetable will be used will be made tomorrow morning in response to the current weather situation.