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It has been a busy day for everyone involved in MotoGP. A large section of the paddock was sat either behind a computer or staring at a mobile device frantically refreshing their flight tracker app of choice, watching the exploits of Aerostan aircraft EX-47001, as it finally made its way from Mombasa in Kenya to Lagos in Nigeria to Salvador in Brazil.

As I write this, it has taken off from Salvador and is winging its way to Tucuman, where it is due to land some time after 9pm. At Salvador, the flight number changed from BSC4042 to BSC4043.

A sign? I leave it up to the reader to decipher the letters BSC in the flight number.

A broken down cargo freighter has thrown the schedule for the Argentina Grand Prix at Termas de Rio Hondo into chaos.

One of the aircraft carrying some of the freight from Indonesia to Argentina suffered problems, causing the freight to get stuck in Mombasa, Kenya, and delaying its arrival at the Termas de Rio Hondo circuit.

With bikes from a number of teams missing – including the Gresini Ducati of MotoGP championship leader Enea Bastianini – it was decided to cancel practice for all three classes on Friday, and to begin the weekend on Saturday instead.

We say it pretty much every Friday of a MotoGP weekend: it’s hard to draw conclusions from the first day of practice.

The first day of practice is usually spent trying out different setups and then assessing which tires are the best compromise between performance and durability for the race, so just glancing at the timesheets doesn’t tell you as much as you would like.

The first day of practice at Mandalika is even more complicated to unravel. First, there is the fact that it rained heavily on Friday morning, leaving the track damp at the start before drying out.

Then there’s the fact that nearly half the track has been resurfaced, the work finished not long before MotoGP arrived.

Finally, Michelin changed the construction of the rear tire from the one used at the test, in response to the heat at the track, the new surface, and the data from the test.

Testing is all well and good, but at last, we have real, actual data from a race track on a bona fide race weekend. All 24 bikes on the track at the same time, trying to figure out as much as possible in two short 45 minute sessions.

No running separately, or trying to figure out how the conditions for the 8-lap run done at 11am compare to the 12-lap run at 2pm, or the 7-lap run at 5pm.

The first day at Qatar may have been genuine competition, but the picture was also confused by the schedule. With FP1 at 1:40pm, in the heat of the day, and FP2 shortly after sunset, at 6pm, conditions were completely different, the air temperature 7°C lower, and the track a whole 16°C cooler.

“Well, for sure now it is hard to see who has the better pace than the other because we don’t have the normal day schedule,” Miguel Oliveira reflected after the first day.”The hour is not that different but for the temperature and the wind it changes quite a lot.”

It was a good day for attention-grabbing headlines at Mandalika. Pol Espargaro ended the day with a scorching lap which took him under the WorldSBK Superpole by four tenths of a second.

There were six different manufacturers in the top six. The lead on the first day changed hands time after time in the last couple of hours.

But the headlines don’t really mean very much. Times were dropping because the track started off filthy and only really started to clean up in the last hour or so of the day.

Pit lane is finally open, if only for some teams – notably Yamaha and Suzuki – to show off their new liveries, and we are starting to get a first look at the new parts some of the factories have to test.

The new Yamaha livery is almost indistinguishable from last year’s, Yamaha following the “if it ain’t broke” philosophy.

Suzuki’s is updated, and to my mind improved by having a dash of black to set off the other colors on the bike. The black panel around the race numbers something of a throwback, though historically, white numbers on a black background were used in the 125cc class.

But with the test due to start properly on Saturday, there were bikes being rolled out into pit lane, which meant we had a chance to see one or two updates being tried.

The danger with making predictions is that it can go horribly wrong. Yesterday, I confidently predicted that it would remain dry all weekend. That prediction lasted until the end of Moto3 FP1.

As the final minute approached, the dark clouds which had been slowly creeping up on the Circuito Ricardo Tormo started to sprinkle the track with rain. Just a little at first, then growing heavier once MotoGP got underway.

The rain stopped during the Moto2 session, leaving the track wet throughout (and giving Sam Lowes the opportunity to suffer a horrible highside and injure his right foot), the cool, overcast weather meaning the track dried out quite slowly.

You would almost think that the championship hadn’t been wrapped up at Misano 2. Friday at Portimão saw Fabio Quartararo and Pecco Bagnaia going head to head as if the title was still on the line. FP1?

Fabio Quartararo beats Pecco Bagnaia, with the two separated by just 0.045. FP2? Fabio Quartararo and Pecco Bagnaia swap fastest laps, with the Frenchman snatching the best time in the dying moments, Pecco Bagnaia coming up just short on his final lap.

It has been something of an irrelevant day at Misano. On Friday morning, the track was soaking, rain keeping it wet. In the afternoon, it started off wet, but a dry line started to form.

“At the end, the last 10 minutes to go, we had one dry line, but lap by lap it was getting wider,” was how Takaaki Nakagami described it.

With damp conditions expected on Saturday, and a cold and dry Sunday, nothing of importance was learned on Friday.

It was a wasted day in terms of finding race setup, perhaps, but it was still useful in overall terms. MotoGP is full of young riders who haven’t had all that much time in the wet, and so Friday offered a chance to gain some valuable experience.

Pol Espargaro summed up the complex emotions of almost the entire grid (possibly bar Jack Miller, but more of that later) at the end of an eventful first day of practice at the Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas.

“First of all we need to say that it’s super nice to come here to America, to be able to race here,” the Repsol Honda rider said. “Already this is something super good after so long in Europe.”

“And to see the American fans is super nice, they are super excited and it’s nice. Saying that, I think we are in a professional MotoGP championship that, we need a minimum of quality in the tracks, about safety, run off area.”

Then came the ‘but’. “We must say that the track is not at the level of a MotoGP championship, sure. First of all, there are parts where the asphalt is super bad.”

Friday at Misano was fun, if a complete waste of time. Ideal conditions for about 35 minutes of FP1, then the deluge came, flooding the track and putting an end to any idea of improvement.

A rainy afternoon – though not quite as rain-sodden as the end of FP1 – meant it was impossible to better the times from this morning.

Which left Maverick Viñales at the top of the timesheets. A remarkable achievement, given this is just his second race on the Aprilia after his dramatic separation from the Yamaha team.

Does this mean that Viñales is now the favorite for the win at Misano? Even Maverick Viñales doesn’t think so.