Indianapolis MotoGP: Lorenzo pips Marquez by 0.003s in FP2, Rossi struggles

Lorenzo, wearing his astronaut-style helmet he often uses in the United States, pulled out a last-gasp lap of the infield road course inside the famous oval venue of 1m32.860s. This just eclipsed Marquez, who is on a hot streak of form after his disastrous start to the season. He lapped in 1m32.863s.

Both Lorenzo and Marquez rattled off a sequence of low 1m33s on a race-pace simulation run, and it looks like this weekend could turn into a private battle for victory between them.

Just as points leader Valentino Rossi needs to keep his pace up, as his title rivals threaten to dominate the weekend, the Italian legend could only manage the 10^th-quickest time on his Yamaha, on 1m33.532s. That was 0.672s off Lorenzo's pace.

Andrea Dovizioso pipped Ducati teammate and namesake Iannone for the third-fastest time of 1m33.155s, with Iannone just 0.011s slower.

Cal Crutchlow was a promising fifth on his LCR Honda, a further 0.02s back from Iannone.

Pol Espargaro, who announced his Tech 3 Yamaha contract extension just this morning, was sixth fastest but suffered a huge highside at Turn 13.

He amazingly walked away without injury, despite the severity of the landing.

Dani Pedrosa was seventh on the second Repsol Honda, ahead of Brits Scott Redding and Bradley Smith.

In other incidents, Aleix Espargaro took to the banked run-off after failing to slow down enough for the first corner, and Toni Elias dropped his Honda early on at Turn 2 without too much damage.