The pace was slow to pick up in the first half of the session, with Lorenzo's FP1 benchmark of 1m31.045s staying unbeaten until the final 10 minutes.

At that stage, Lorenzo had 0.280s in hand over Marquez at the top of the timesheets, but the Honda rider grabbed the top spot by becoming the first rider of the day to break through the 1m30s barrier with a 1m30.986s. He immediately followed that up with an even faster lap of 1m30.710s.

That put him a massive 0.452s up on Lorenzo, and although a succession of other riders - Andrea Dovizioso, Pol Espargaro and Maverick Vinales - got themselves ahead of Lorenzo, none could touch Marquez.

However, with just one minute left on the clock, Lorenzo was able to lower Marquez's time by nearly a quarter of a second, setting a 1m30.463s, to re-establish his authority on the session.

Marquez therefore had to settle for second, fractionally ahead of Suzuki rider Vinales third, followed by Espargaro's Tech 3 Yamaha and Dovizioso's factory Ducati.

Aleix Espargaro made it two Suzuki riders in the top six, just 0.003s ahead of Andrea Iannone on the second works Ducati.

Valentino Rossi failed to deliver the late improvements that his rivals were able to, leaving the Italian eighth fastest and 0.794s behind Lorenzo when the chequered flag fell.

Danilo Petrucci (Pramac Ducati) and a recovering Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda) completed a top 10 split by less than nine tenths, with Cal Crutchlow also getting the LCR Honda within a second of Lorenzo's pace in P11.

Mika Kallio once again ended up bottom of the timesheets on the KTM RC16, 3.111s off the pace.

Yonny Hernandez became the day's only crasher when he lost his Aspar Ducati at Turn 12 in the closing stages, the Colombian going 18th fastest.

Second practice results:

Cla	#	Rider	Bike	Time	Gap
1	99	Jorge Lorenzo	Yamaha	1'30.463
2	93	Marc Marquez	Honda	1'30.710	0.247
3	25	Maverick Viñales	Suzuki	1'30.775	0.312
4	44	Pol Espargaro	Yamaha	1'31.000	0.537
5	4	Andrea Dovizioso	Ducati	1'31.066	0.603
6	41	Aleix Espargaro	Suzuki	1'31.186	0.723
7	29	Andrea Iannone	Ducati	1'31.189	0.726
8	46	Valentino Rossi	Yamaha	1'31.257	0.794
9	9	Danilo Petrucci	Ducati	1'31.295	0.832
10	26	Dani Pedrosa	Honda	1'31.358	0.895
11	35	Cal Crutchlow	Honda	1'31.462	0.999
12	45	Scott Redding	Ducati	1'31.733	1.270
13	8	Hector Barbera	Ducati	1'31.742	1.279
14	43	Jack Miller	Honda	1'31.754	1.291
15	50	Eugene Laverty	Ducati	1'31.776	1.313
16	6	Stefan Bradl	Aprilia	1'32.014	1.551
17	19	Alvaro Bautista	Aprilia	1'32.206	1.743
18	68	Yonny Hernandez	Ducati	1'32.218	1.755
19	38	Bradley Smith	Yamaha	1'32.280	1.817
20	76	Loris Baz	Ducati	1'32.476	2.013
21	53	Tito Rabat	Honda	1'32.646	2.183
22	36	Mika Kallio	KTM	1'33.574	3.111