Repsol Honda's Dani Pedrosa fired a warning shot across the bows of the Aragon MotoGP field in first free practice this morning, lapping almost half a second faster than Jorge Lorenzo to top the timesheet with team-mate Casey Stoner in third.
Pedrosa managed to put in three laps faster than his fellow, Yamaha-mounted Spaniard and is finding a lot of his time through the final two corners. His last lap of 1'50.281 was set just as the chequered flag came out, sealed the deal ahead of Lorenzo's 1'50.730 which had put him top with five minutes left to run.
Stoner, as always, set the early pace and was top of the pile until Lorenzo found his form. San Carlo Honda's Marco Simoncelli yo-yo'd in and out of the top four all session but just scraped back in with his last lap of a 1'50.893 to demote lifelong rival Andrea Dovizioso into fifth.
Pramac Ducati's Randy De Puniet flew into third place with ten minutes of the session left and had Colin Edwards, on the Monster Yamaha, chasing him but the Frenchman was eventually busted down to sixth and only held off Nicky Hayden by 0.042s to stay there.
The American remained in front of team-mate Valentino Rossi on the timesheet as the nine-time world champion experimented with his new aluminium chassis. The Doctor first went out on the carbon GP11.1 and then, after running off track, swapped to the ally GP11.1.1 and also ran off track. He eventually lapped in 1'51.676, 1.4 s off the pace.
Edwards just kept himself inside the top ten with a lap slightly quicker than Hiro Aoyama's 1'51.859. Ben Spies, on the second factory Yamaha, is in 11th and struggling to find some pace with Alvaro Bautista separating him from Cal Crutchlow in 14th. The Briton has never raced here before and had an off-track excursion early on.
