Having led an Aprilia 1-2 at the end of first practice in Barcelona on Friday, Espargaro carried on his strong home form to top the second session by 0.362 seconds from team-mate Maverick Vinales.
Crucially, Espargaro got this lap in before a late yellow flag for Luca Marini’s stricken VR46 Ducati caused havoc for many riders still on flying laps.
Reigning world champion Francesco Bagnaia completed the top three at the end of a scrappy hour for the Ducati rider, while all Japanese bikes missed the Q2 qualifying cut.
In an embarrassing scene for Yamaha and Honda, all of its riders occupied the last places in the order from 17th to 22nd, with 2022 Catalan GP winner Fabio Quartararo leading them.
At the beginning of the hour-long session, Gresini Ducati’s Fabio Di Giannantonio set the initial pace at 1m40.908s, which he followed up with a 1m40.180s having gone out on a fresh soft rear tyre straight away.
With 35 minutes of the session to run, Ducati’s Bagnaia took over with a 1m40.149s, though the championship leader was far from happy as he continually struggled to get his GP23 stopped on the brakes into Turn 1.
This led to a frantic engineering discussion within the factory Ducati garage around Bagnaia, while Aprilia’s Vinales took over top spot about 10 minutes later with a 1m40.095s.
Vinales set the time just moments after nearly being flung from his RS-GP going through Turn 3 when the rear let go on him.
Source: Autosport