The overseas tour is officially on as the Pertamina Grand Prix of Indonesia action began on Friday morning in Lombok island, with Pedro Acosta and Augusto Fernandez facing the hot and humid conditions of the tropical surf paradise, a rather big change to accustom themselves to following the end-of-summer temperatures of Misano last week. That did not seem to bother rookie Acosta too much though, with the Red Bull GASGAS Tech3 rider grabbing his Q2 ticket after Friday’s practice, with a P8. Fernandez completed day one in P20.

Winner of the Moto2™ edition last year, Pedro Acosta arrived in Indonesia with confidence from both the past results in Indonesia, and from the previous weekend in Misano, and the timesheets said it all. In the opening Free Practice 1 session, the rookie was fourth fastest after eighteen laps, with a best in 1’31.271, only 0.582 seconds from the fastest, Franco Morbidelli. That’s what we call settling pretty well. Later in the afternoon, Acosta was quick to set a fast lap to position himself at the top of the timesheets, but we also saw the rookie crash early into the session in T1, after trying his best to save it. That caused him a small loss of time as he returned to his garage, but as soon as he jumped back on his bike, he bounced back from that early crash, with a 1’30.411 provisionally placing him at the top. That time had him first until the time attacks session. Of course from there, times went down as all riders gave that extra Friday afternoon push, but Acosta did too. In his penultimate lap, the shark clocked in a 1’29.961, one that got him the 8th position, and another direct Q2 ticket! Objective of the day complete for the rookie who will now eye for a strong grid position.

Augusto Fernandez was happy to return to Lombok island too, eager to continue improving. In the opening session, the Spaniard’s best in 1’32.473 after twenty laps saw him take P20 of the Free Practice 1. After a few changes made on his bike with the goal to improve his feeling for the Practice session, Augusto headed out at 15:00 for the very warm one-hour session. We saw him improve from his morning time, but his late and best lap of 1’30.895 was still short to make it close to the top 10 and the Q2 tickets. The Red Bull GASGAS Tech3 rider will have to go through qualifying 1 on Saturday morning at 10:10 local time (GMT+8).