Johann Zarco’s quick thinking saw the Pramac rider take the spoils in MotoGP FP2 at Barcelona this afternoon as he set the fastest overall time of Friday.

Gifted a tow by Fabio Quartararo’s final hot-lap, the Frenchmen both swept across the line in the last session’s dying seconds, with Zarco receiving the boost he needed to slide into the top-spot - with a 1’39.235 - as the Yamaha was forced to settle for third.

“Fabio helped me a lot for the last two laps” Zarco admitted this afternoon.

“I got lucky to follow him in the right moment. I think I could be also fast alone, but not in first position - maybe a 39.6 was possible alone. I want to say sorry and thanks at the same time to Fabio.

“I’m pretty happy, because here in Barcelona it’s a track I appreciate a lot. The riding, it’s much more smooth than in Mugello and less demanding physically, so it’s nice to be able to be fast but keep having energy on the bike to control the situation.

“This layout is much better, because it gives you some option if you miss a bit the brake. You can always do the corner, you will lose a bit of time but not like before - where if you miss the brake first of all you can maybe hit someone, but then you lose so much time. It’s much better for bikes to have kind of round corners. Really small corners like the Formula One is sometimes a bit tricky, good for some riders, not good for some others. For me, this layout is much better, as we could see also in the last lap - we had two different lines, with Fabio, and both were working well.”