Marquez resumes dominant form, Bagnaia trailing again

Marc Marquez shrugged off his crash from the opening MotoGP practice session at Austin's Circuit of the Americas to dominate the second session.

Marquez led a Ducati 1-2-3-4-5, with only his team-mate and presumed title rival Pecco Bagnaia the odd one out - albeit also in that crucial top 10.

The track was still wet but clearly drying to begin the 60-minute outing, and a third of the way in two riders ventured out on slicks for the first time: Luca Marini and Jack Miller.

Marini initially tiptoed around the track well off the pace, but Miller immediately went fastest with his first flying lap - and soon enough the rest of the field all swapped from wets to slicks, kicking off the traditional 'Q0' part of the weekend determining 10 of the 12 places in Q2 tomorrow.

Once Marquez was out on slicks, he immediately made his presence known, consistently lapping faster than anyone else from there on until the very end of the session even as track conditions got better and better.

He ended up on a 2m02.929s, two seconds off Maverick Vinales' record lap from two years ago but still three quarters of a second clear of his nearest rival - VR46 Ducati's Fabio Di Giannantonio.

Both Di Giannantonio and team-mate Franco Morbidelli used the peak of the conditions to move into the top three at the final moment, relegating Gresini Ducati duo Alex Marquez and Fermin Aldeguer to fourth and fifth respectively.

Despite this it was perhaps rookie Aldeguer's best session in MotoGP so far, and perhaps by far, too, as he'd spent almost its entirety towards the top of the timesheets.

Secured Q2 spots: M Marquez, Di Giannantonio, Morbidelli, A Marquez, Aldeguer, Miller, Acosta, Vinales, Mir, Bagnaia

Contesting Q1: Quartararo, Binder, Bezzecchi, Ogura, Marini, R Fernandez, Rins, Bastianini, A Fernandez, Zarco, Chantra, Savadori

Miller was unsurprisingly best of the rest, rubberstamping his place in Q2 with the sixth-fastest time.

He is so far the only Yamaha rider to claim a Q2 spot, while Joan Mir is the only Honda rider to have done so.

LCR Honda rider Johann Zarco will have likely joined Mir in that top 10 but crashed out late on.

Pedro Acosta and COTA specialist Vinales put two KTM RC16s into Q2, marking the latter's first Q2 appearance of the season.

Bagnaia was a just tenth up on Fabio Quartararo in that final Q2 spot.

The only manufacturer absent from the top 10 was Aprilia, with both Marco Bezzecchi and Ai Ogura mounting credible challenges late on but ultimately coming up well short.

Replacement rider Augusto Fernandez, standing in for the injured Miguel Oliveira at Pramac Yamaha, was a respectable 19th.