Bagnaia Edges Martin by 0.005s in Thrilling Japanese GP Warm-Up Duel at Motegi

Francesco Bagnaia narrowly edges out Martin by 0.005 seconds in the MotoGP warm-up session in Japan. Competitors for the championship showed similar performance levels during the Sunday practice at Motegi.

During the morning warm-up session for the Japanese Grand Prix at Motegi, Francesco Bagnaia and Jorge Martin, competitors in the MotoGP title race, were divided by a mere 0.005 seconds.

Following cloudy skies and rainfall on Friday and Saturday, Sunday morning arrived with clear and sunny weather.

During the ten-minute session, Bagnaia, the sprint winner, narrowed Martin's lead to 15 points and swapped the lead with the Pramac rider four times.

Bagnaia secured his fifth Sprint victory of the season following Pedro Acosta's fall from the lead position. Meanwhile, Martin finished in fourth place after a crash during qualifying had him starting from the fourth row on the grid.

Martin expressed his belief that they were prepared for an exciting confrontation today.

Much like Marc Marquez, Martin will once more have to work his way up through the field. However, he will have the advantage of covering twice the race distance and will likely be using a different rear tire for this effort.

In the Sprint race, every rider opted for the soft rear tire, but for the grand prix, the recommendation is to use the medium rear tire. During the warm-up session, all riders except for wild-card entrant Remy Gardner chose to use hard front tires paired with medium rear tires.

However, following the event, a few riders hinted that they might still take a risk by choosing the soft rear tire…

Second-place finisher in the sprint, Enea Bastianini, along with KTM's pole position qualifier Acosta and Saturday's podium achiever Marquez, rounded out the top five in the warm-up session. These five riders, who are also the leading contenders in the world championship, were separated by a mere 0.258 seconds.

Due to a penalty for exceeding track limits, Marquez is required to begin the race from the ninth position on the grid, rather than from

Franco Morbidelli, Marco Bezzecchi, and Fabio di Giannantonio, along with LCR Honda teammates Johann Zarco and Takaaki Nakagami, who were involved in a collision during the race, completed the top ten in the warm-up session.

Fabio Quartararo was once more the top performer for Yamaha, finishing in eleventh place, while Maverick Vinales, who had qualified on the front row, ended up in twelfth.

The Aprilia motorcyclist struggled to brake sufficiently to deactivate his holeshot device at the first turn during the Sprint. He made some adjustments to the bike during warm-up, but these changes did not seem to be effective.

Aleix Espargaro, who is on the same team, finished the warm-up in 17th place, yet he was still less than a second behind Bagnaia.

This afternoon, the 24-lap race, which marks the conclusion of the initial flyaway triple-header, is scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. local time (6 a.m. in the UK).

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