Here is the thing about Aprilia Racing coming into the Pertamina Grand Prix of Indonesia: they arrived as the red-hot favourites, and they backed it right up in Free Practice 1. Marco Bezzecchi, who took pole position and Sprint gold here last year, put on a fine display to top the opening session with a lap time of 1:30.132. That put him 0.237s clear of the chasing pack.
Right behind him was Marc Marquez of the Ducati Lenovo Team, grabbing an eye-catching P2 to start his weekend. Meanwhile, World Championship leader Jorge Martin of Aprilia Racing slotted straight into P3. With Pedro Acosta of Red Bull KTM Factory Racing taking fourth place, finishing 0.294s away from Bezzecchi's benchmark, the top four positions in the championship lockout the front of the timing sheets before the afternoon's Practice.
The Aprilia dominance continued further down the order. Raul Fernandez of the SuperFile Trackhouse MotoGP Team claimed fifth place, meaning there are three RS-GP machines sitting inside the top five in Indonesia. It was a strong statement from the factory and its satellite machinery.
Not everyone had a clean run, though. Ai Ogura of the SuperFile Trackhouse MotoGP Team and Fermin Aldeguer of the BK8 Gresini Racing MotoGP team both suffered crashes during the session in separate incidents. Thankfully, both sophomore stars came away uninjured. Despite his tumble, last year's Lombok winner Aldeguer managed to salvage P9 by the end of the session, while the Japanese star found himself down in P21.
Rounding out the rest of the top order, the Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing Team duo of Franco Morbidelli and Fabio Di Giannantonio collected sixth and seventh places respectively. Fabio Quartararo put his Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP machine in eighth to kick off his weekend in promising fashion. Right behind his teammate Aldeguer, Alex Marquez of the BK8 Gresini Racing MotoGP team completed the top 10.
