Augusto’s day started with the usual Free Practice 2 session of thirty minutes, allowing riders to get their final adjustments made before the qualifying. The number 37 appeared to have found a few twists which improved his feeling on the Indonesian layout, taking ninth of the session with a best lap in 1’31.537. The pre-qualifying stage was quite busy and has proved this year to be very difficult to go through, with lap times often being faster than in the Q2. Fernandez improved his time to 1’31.034, but that was 0.507 seconds too short from Enea Bastianini who secured the last ticket to the final stage, and took out from Q2 his teammate Francesco Bagnaia at the same time. That lap time gave Augusto Fernandez an eighteenth position on the grid, for both today’s Tissot Sprint and Sunday’s race. When lights went out in hot Lombok island, Augusto lost one position after one lap but remained behind Raul Fernandez, who was just one place ahead of him on the grid. An early race incident between Aleix Espargaro and Brad Binder meant that he progressed to P17 at lap 2, and then P15 two laps later. He found himself a bit stuck behind Raul Fernandez, even though his lap times were faster than the ex-Tech 3 rider, but eventually he managed to get the best of him on the sixth lap, to find himself in fourteenth behind teammate Pol Espargaro. He then lost for a moment his position to Johann Zarco, but quickly got it back. Once he had settled behind his teammate, the race pace was more consistent and he rode his fastest race lap towards the end, on lap 11 of 13, in 1’31.481. A late mistake from Joan Mir towards the end allowed him to pass the checkered flag in P13 today.

After taking the eleventh place on Friday’s practice, Pol Espargaro tried his best today to make it to Q2, but the fight is always a tough one. All riders have continued to be so close to each other, with nineteen of twenty-one of them finishing less than one second from each other this morning in FP2. The GASGAS Tech3 rider continued to work while preparing for the qualifying, and rode his best in 1’31.807. In qualy, he gave an extra push and took his time down to 1’31.006, but that was not enough to make it to Q2. This meant he would line up in sixteenth on the grid. When lights went out, Pol took a decent start to find himself in P13 after one lap behind Miguel Oliveira, and then he gained more spots to P11 following the incident between his brother Aleix and Pierer Mobility teammate Brad Binder. With Miguel Oliveira and Jack Miller setting the pace in front of him, he managed to hold on to his position for a while but eventually started to lose a bit the rhythm halfway through the sprint. Later on, a small mistake saw him being retrograted to P17, which was his final position. A bit of a shame for the Spaniard, who will look forward to trying to get a better result on Sunday, with the main showdown taking place at 15:00 local time (GMT+8).