Earlier in the week it was so hot here in Germany that Bridgestone brought harder tires. Then the temperature dropped and was windy and cold Thursday and Friday. Saturday morning it was balmy and warm. To complicate that, Alex Briggs tweeted that this is one of the circuits where the track is much different in the afternoon compared to how it was in the morning. So basically, just another day at the MotoGP office for Sachsenring 2015 Day 2.

Eagle eye David Emmett scooped me on the fact that Ducati had updated their winglets again, shown above. Each factory rider has one bike with the old style and one with this new one.

Though Dani Pedrosa held pole position briefly near the end of the session, Marc Marquez broke his own lap record here with a 1’20.336 and claimed another pole in his collection. After a rough start in 2015, he seems to have his feeling back and will be the rider to beat tomorrow.

Dani’s first run was thwarted by a slow-going Cal Crutchlow, and Dani was hot about it. When they came back into pit lane, Cal appeared to try to get Dani’s attention, but Dani wouldn’t look over. Later Cal apologized at the practice start area, and Dani ended up 2nd anyway.

Cal ended up tenth, just over a second off the pace.

Though half a second behind Marquez, Jorge Lorenzo was pleased to be the fastest Yamaha ever around Sachsenring and will try to use his trademark ability to string fast laps together to fight for a podium.

The Over-Achiever Award goes to Yonny Hernandez who put his Ducati in 5th place. Way to go!

Maverick Vinales put up a great fight in QP1 to move into QP2, but then couldn’t better his 12th position.

Did you notice how some of the riders are wearing double knee sliders on their left knees? It’s another situation caused by the long string of left-handers here at Sachsenring. Rossi wore through his first slider and was well into his second before he had a chance to put new ones on.

Photographs: ©2015 by Scott Jones / PHOTO.GP – All Rights Reserved

Camera Info: Nikon D4 with Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 and Nikon 500mm f/4.0

[mgallery keyword=”Sachsenring”]