Five days on from the mild temperatures of Japan, Tech3 had to endure the tropical conditions of Indonesia. Friday proved to be a particular test of endurance with track temperatures hitting 59 degrees during Practice, while humidity stood at 71%.

The intense conditions were a good test for Viñales in his second appearance since returning to the grid. The Spaniard was 19th in FP1 and improved his personal best time by a full second in Practice, when he placed 20th.

Fresh from his best result of the season in Japan, Bastianini had a promising morning when he placed twelfth - less than half a second from a place in the top five.

However, the afternoon proved to be trickier. After a solid early run on Michelin’s soft rear tyre, ‘La Bestia’ was pushing to move up the order with twelve minutes to go when he lost the front of his KTM RC16 at Turn 8. The Italian then suffered another, slower fall at Turn 16 in the session’s final seconds. Thankfully, Bastianini was unharmed after both incidents, but this left him 21st at the end of play.

Viñales and Bastianini are now eagerly awaiting FP2 at 10:10 CEST (UTC+8) on Saturday to try out the changes to their respective settings. Qualifying will follow that at 10:50 (UTC+8), which then sets the grid for the 13-lap Sprint at 15:00 (UTC+8).

Maverick Viñales: “We are still trying to work on the bike. I still don’t understand the feelings and the feedback it gives me and over two laps it is never the same. I need to understand how to improve that. Otherwise, we have no consistency and that’s tough. It’s a matter of continuing to ride to look for a better way to push the bike. Like Japan, I’m struggling a lot when I lean into the corner. I have a lot of movements from the rear when I’m at full banking and then I can’t hit the apex. I need to improve on that area. Apart from that, I did a lot of training in the heat during the summer, so I feel like I have adapted well to the conditions here. I’m still optimistic of improving this weekend.”

Enea Bastianini: “Thankfully, I am OK after the crashes. I feel good and nothing strange happened even if the first one was quite fast. I did a big mistake in the first time attack. It was too early to push like this. I came into the turn with too much angle and lost the front. Then I came back to the box and took the second bike, but you always need to have confidence to push on the second bike. We had a few problems today with the rear brake, which we will look at this evening. Also, the grip of the track is very low. It’s quite strange. When you try to do one manoeuvre a bit faster, you crash. That’s why we saw many crashes in MotoGP today. Anyway, we’ll take the lessons from today. I feel some potential so let’s try and get out of Q1 tomorrow and go from there.”