2017 Phillip Island Moto3 FP2 Result: Mir Reclaims Control

Marginally warmer and with some extra layers of rubber on the circuit, the lightweight class did not need a lot of time to drop their times significantly under their FP1 benchmarks all throughout the field. In the improved conditions, one-lap king Jorge Martin stole the show early in the session and left the world championship leader to do all the work to catch up. And so he did, Joan Mir taking over the lead past the halfway mark of FP2.

The star in the final part of the session was Bo Bendsneyder, the sizeable Dutch rider aided slightly by his stature in the windy conditions while finding his way to the top. Bendsneyder was not the first to drop into the 1:37s but when he did, he immediately put a three-tenths’ gap into the challengers. The time looked unchallenged until the very last handful of minutes, when the main characters resumed battle.

Even without the late rapid lap nearly nudging the 1:36s and bagging him the session, Mir’s strong pace would be a good enough reason to worry his rivals. Aron Canet kept away from drama this time around and a late lap saw him cut Mir’s advantage in half - to little over two tenths of a second. That caused Bendsneyder to drop to third position in the session, half a second down.

Another tenth down was a refreshed Gabriel Rodrigo, whose inconsistency swayed once again towards the top end of the times, in fourth position. Early leader Martin found himself losing ground despite some late improvements of his own and finished fifth.

After his acrobatics in the morning session, Romano Fenati lost some more track time with additional alterations in the garage. Once he did get out, the Italian remained significantly off the pace until the final three minutes when he jumped some twenty places to finish sixth.

Juanfran Guevara in seventh position and Tatsuki Suzuki in eighth were mere hundredths of a second behind, with FP1 leader Nicolo Bulega in ninth and Marcos Ramirez completing the top ten as the final man within a second of the leader.

The likes of Niccolo Antonelli, Ayumu Sasaki and Enea Bastianini had contrasting sessions after starting the day at the top end of the timesheets, the trio seemingly struggling over one second off the pace the second time around.

Results: