Bezzecchi explains how he went from crashing twice to topping Japanese GP practice

Aprilia MotoGP star Marco Bezzecchi says he was feeling confident from his very first lap at Motegi, as he bounced back from two early crashes to top Friday practice for the Japanese Grand Prix.

Bezzecchi went down at Turn 11 just minutes into the start of FP1 at Motegi, severely damaging his primary Aprilia RS-GP.

He headed back to the pits to mount his second bike, only to hit the deck again in a wretched start to his Japanese GP weekend.

With both his bikes damaged, he had to sit out the remaining 18 minutes of the session, leaving him 11th on the leaderboard and more than half a second off pacesetter Francesco Bagnaia.

“The confidence was good and maybe this is why I pushed a bit too much in the beginning, especially because the first crash was a mistake that I could have avoided,” he told MotoGP’s official website.

“I was coming super fast already and I braked strongly. I was maybe a bit wide but I wanted to put the bike in anyway. 

“The soft front is normally a good tyre to start, but on a track like this with so many hard braking points, it’s not the best. So it was a mistake by me.

“The second crash was a very, very small mistake, but we are so on the limit every time we jump on the bike. Small differences make a difference. It was a couple of mistakes that were better to avoid.”

However, there were already signs that Aprilia was quick around Motegi, as attested by Jorge Martin’s second-place finish in FP1, and Bezzecchi put that pace to good use with the fastest lap of the day in Practice.

In the final minutes of a frantic session where the lead changed several times, the Italian posted a time of 1m43.193s to beat the KTM of Pedro Acosta by 0.136s.

He was one of the only two Aprilia riders to secure a direct entry into Q2, as Raul Fernandez finished a solid ninth for the satellite Trackhouse team.

Bezzecchi explained that even though he had crashed twice early on, he knew he had the speed to finish at the front in practice.

“The confidence was there, which is why I was pushing so hard,” he said. “I felt good since the first time I jumped on the bike. I knew it could be positive in the end.

“Then in the afternoon, we started with a bit more calm, but the sensations were good again.

“I want to say thanks especially to my guys, because they had to work a lot today to repair my bike. The first one was very destroyed, and they couldn’t even eat lunch, so big shoutout to my team and to the Aprilia guys.”

Ducati was unusually off the pace in the main practice session on Friday, with factory riders Marc Marquez and Bagnaia sitting outside the top 10 for much of the session. Both eventually made it through Q2 in third and seventh respectively, although Alex Marquez could only manage 15th on the Gresini-run bike.

Ducati’s apparent lack of speed allowed Aprilia and KTM to lead the way, while both Honda and Yamaha were also represented in the top 10.

However, Bezzecchi doesn’t want to read too much into Ducati’s results and expects the Borgo Panigale marque to make a step forward overnight.

“From Friday to Saturday, our opponents, especially Ducati, make a big, big step normally,” he said.

“We started well, the bike feels good, I feel good with the bike, we have to stay concentrated and try to continue in this way, to put this effort again tomorrow.

“I expect a more normal result tomorrow, even though I hope there can be a possibility for us to have a good Saturday.”