Reigning MotoGP World Champion Marc Marquez has marmalised the MotoGP opposition in today’s opening free practice session, sitting with a 1.3s lead over Valentino Rossi until the last minutes when Aleix Espargaro cut the gap to nine-tenths of a second.
Marquez banged in a 2’04.841 with 18 minutes left to run and then upped his game to a 2’04.704 on his tenth lap of 15 to top the sheets with Rossi on a 2’05.972 until Espargaro came out with his Open class Yamaha running a soft tyre to bang in a 2’05.591.
Dani Pedrosa also shuffled ahead of Rossi with his last lap of a 2’05.676 but he will not be happy to be the business end of a second slower than his team-mate. Another rider who will be distinctly dischuffed will be Jorge Lorenzo. The Spaniard, who is back on the 2013-spec tyres he so loves for Austin (click here), was more than two seconds slower than Marquez and down in 12th place.
It was a good session for the works Ducatis and their Open settings. After a factory-wide electronics glitch at Qatar, Andrea Dovizioso set the fifth quickest time with a 2’06.279 while team-mate Cal Crutchlow overcame an early problem - which saw him having to push his GP14 back up pitlane after it stopped at the top of the hill - in seventh.
He was right behind his team-mate until Bradley Smith’s last lap demoted him out of sixth. Stefan Bradl placed eighth with Andrea Iannanone ninth and Alvaro Bautista, who also had a problem on lap one, in tenth.
Pol Espargaro, on the Monster Yamaha, stayed ahead of Lorenzo, with Nicky Hayden 13th. The American also had a mechanical problem at the end of the session but remained ahead of the retiring Colin Edwards. Scott Redding was 19th and 3.9s off the pace while the PBMs of Michael Laverty and Broc Parkes were 21sr and 22nd.
