World Championship leader Marc Marquez crashed at start of FP2 at the Tissot Australian Grand Prix on Friday, whilst his Repsol Honda teammate Dani Pedrosa experienced a strange mechanical issue late on and ended up fourth fastest.

Indeed, the first day of Phillip Island free practice concluded with Marquez and Pedrosa in second and fourth positions, respectively, on the combined timesheet.

Marquez crashed at Turn 9 of the Australian track early on in the second session, and failed to repeat his lap times from the first practice, whilst Pedrosa was forced to stop on track due to a mechanical problem caused by a mistake by his team.

Pedrosa’s engine mounting bolt was not properly locked and came loose. He realised there was a problem immediately and pulled his bike safely off the track.

In the morning session, Marquez immediately demonstrated a good understanding of the Australian circuit. He finished with the second fastest time of 1’29.255, just 0.088s off that of Jorge Lorenzo. Pedrosa finished in fourth place, 0.841s off the top spot.

In the second session, Pedrosa lowered his times to stop the clock at 1’29.438, after just 13 laps. The Spaniard was third on the timesheet in the run. Improving his times after an early crash, Marquez was unable to match his morning lap times and was sixth.

"Today was very positive, the new asphalt felt good and the tyres worked well for us," said an upbeat Pedrosa. "The only setback was that we were unable to make the most of all the time available, due to a problem with the bike at the end of the afternoon session. That meant that we had to end the day early. In general it was a good day, and we shall try to improve further tomorrow."

Marquez added,

"The day went well ‒especially in the morning. It's a pity about the crash right at the start of the afternoon run but we went back out with the second bike, which had a totally different geometry and we had no time in which to change things.

"Thus, we used the initial setup for the entire session. We shall see if tomorrow we can regain the feeling that we had in the morning session, as I felt very good ‒something that is very important at Phillip Island. We shall continue working in order to improve for the race."

.