In a stark contrast to the beginning of the 2023 season this year Enea Bastianini (Ducati Lenovo) is back, healthy and ready to compete. Bastianini led the field setting a 1m38.057s. He finished ahead of Jack Miller (Red Bull KTM Factory Racing) by just over a tenth of a second. Bastianini said
“It had been a while since I last was on top of the timesheets! It was a day of constant improvement: we didn’t start on the right foot, but we kept making progress lap after lap. We continued to work on the set up especially with regards to the issues we encountered in Qatar. We did really well with the soft tyre, while there’s still work to be done with the medium compound. The track was very dirty this morning, so the important data will be the one from the afternoon session; I feel like I always make the difference on corner entry, and I feel really comfortable with this bike.”
Practice Results From Portugal