CONSISTENT IMPROVEMENT FOR NAGASHIMA AT PHILLIP ISLAND

Tetsuta Nagashima enjoyed a positive second day at Phillip Island as he showed consistent improvement ahead of Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix. Deputising again for the injured Takaaki Nakagami, the LCR Honda IDEMITSU rider will start from the eighth row of the grid having shown competitive race pace during Saturday’s free practice sessions.

Having ridden the circuit for the first time on MotoGP machinery yesterday, Tetsuta made rapid progress in a dry FP3 session as he shaved a second and a half off his overnight time. He worked well with LCR team-mate Álex Márquez to finish 22^nd in FP4 and is upbeat about his chances in tomorrow’s race despite not finding his best in qualifying.