Record Times Tumble on Friday at Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix™

There was a lot going on as Practice came to a halt on the opening day of the Liqui Moly Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix 2025.

Here are some of the news items that you may have missed...

Marco Bezzecchi’s fastest time of Friday reset the best-ever lap of Phillip Island by some distance. The time to beat was the lap set by Jorge Martin on the Pramac Ducati in 2023, a 1m27.246s. This time survived after no riders managed to best it in 2024 – but this time around, Bezzecchi lowered it to 1m26.492s.

It was the same in Moto2. Diogo Moreira’s time of 1m30.307s went under the record set a year ago by Aron Canet, which was 1m30.816s. It would also have put Moreira, on an intermediate class machine, in pole position for the first MotoGP™ class Grand Prix™ at Phillip Island in 2002!

And to complete the set… David Almansa set the best time in Moto3, a lap of 1m34.726s, bettering the record set by Stefano Nepa (1m35.370s) a year ago.

Joel Kelso will be looking to better his best Phillip Island finish of third in 2023 when the Moto3 swarm takes to the track on Sunday. But the 22-year-old from Darwin will have a lot of work to do in the corners if he is to get onto the podium. While Irish racer Eddie O’Shea topped the speed trap on Friday with a speed of 251.4km/h on his Honda, Kelso and his KTM were second to last on the sheets, at 244.0km/h.

This is the second year in a row that Harrison Voight has got a late call-up to replace an injured rider at Phillip Island. A year ago the Queenslander stepped in to replace Dani Muñoz at Preicanos Racing when the Spaniard was injured. Voight qualified the team’s Kalex 24th and finished the race in 18th.

This time around the 19-year-old is aboard the Boscoscuro vacated by another Spaniard, Unai Orradre, who aggravated a wrist injury when he came off in Japan. Voight, who races for the Spanish Cardoso Racing team in the 2025 Moto2 European Championship, is also due to race next week in Malaysia.