{"id":42004,"date":"2026-02-27T12:04:41","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T12:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=42004"},"modified":"2026-02-27T12:04:41","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T12:04:41","slug":"bezzecchi-beats-marquez-in-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=42004","title":{"rendered":"Bezzecchi beats Marquez in practice"},"content":{"rendered":"
Marco Bezzecchi set a new track record to finish fastest ahead of defending world champion Marc Marquez in practice for the season-opening Thailand MotoGP on Friday.<\/p>\n

Aprilia’s Bezzecchi roared round the Buriram course in 1 min 28.526 sec to top the timesheets, 0.421 sec in front of Ducati’s second-placed Marquez.<\/p>\n

Marquez is launching his bid for a record-equalling eighth world title this weekend after dominating the competition last season.<\/p>\n

But Bezzecchi proved he will be a force to be reckoned with in a practice session that somehow stayed mostly dry despite ominous dark clouds and rumbles of thunder.<\/p>\n

The Italian came through at the end of the session to update his own track record, which he set in pre-season testing last week.<\/p>\n

He was also fastest in the morning’s free practice.<\/p>\n

VR46’s Fabio Di Giannantonio was third-fastest in the afternoon session, followed by KTM’s Pedro Acosta, Aprilia’s Jorge Martin and Gresini’s Alex Marquez.<\/p>\n

Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia, the 2022 and 2023 world champion, finished 15th, forcing him into Saturday’s first qualifying session.<\/p>\n

His teammate Marc Marquez was also struggling until he surged up the timesheets with around 20 minutes of the session to go.<\/p>\n

The Spaniard begins the season still suffering the effect of a shoulder injury that forced him to miss the final four races of last season.<\/p>\n

He said on Thursday that the injury had forced him to change his riding style until he returns to full fitness.<\/p>\n

Turkey’s Toprak Razgatlioglu, a three-time Superbike world champion making his MotoGP debut, finished the practice session 21st out of 22.<\/p>\n

Martin, whose defence of his title last season was wrecked by injuries, crashed 10 minutes into the morning free practice session.<\/p>\n

Trackhouse’s Ai Ogura also came off in the afternoon session.<\/p>\n

The top 10 fastest riders in practice book their tickets for Saturday’s second qualifying session, which shapes the first four rows of the grid.<\/p>\n

This group are then joined by the two fastest riders from the first qualifying session.<\/p>\n

Qualifying determines the grid for both the sprint race on Saturday and the main event GP on Sunday afternoon.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marco Bezzecchi set a new track record to finish fastest ahead of defending world champion Marc Marquez in practice for the season-opening Thailand MotoGP on Friday. Aprilia’s Bezzecchi roared round the Buriram course in 1 min 28.526 sec to top the timesheets, 0.421 sec in front of Ducati’s second-placed Marquez. Marquez is launching his bid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}