Reigning MotoGP World Champion Marc Marquez easily topped the opening free practice session at Silverstone this morning, ending with a six-tenths advantage over Pramac Ducati’s Andrea Iannone.
The Repsol Honda man was never headed and finished the session with a 2’03.208. His previous lap had to be aborted after he almost ran into the back of Pol Espargaro’s Monster Yamaha and Marquez had to take to the run off at Brooklands in order to avoid a collision.
Iannone hopped into second with his last run on the soft tyre, lapping at 2’03.869 which had brought him to half a second behind Marquez before the 2014 series leader went back out to set his fastest time of the session.
Andrea Dovizioso ended in third place on a 2’04.052 which attained by following Marquez but cancelled a lap which would have seen him go faster than the RC213V as he had been quicker in the opening two sectors and was on course to beat the Spaniard but he pitted.
Go&Fun Honda’s Alvaro Bautista also found some pace late on, hopping into fourth with a 2’04.187 which demoted Aleix Espargaro into fifth and Stefan Bradl to sixth.
Movistar Yamaha’s Jorge Lorenzo, who won this race last year, spent a good deal of the practice using the extra-soft front tyre which propelled him to a 2’04.240 to end a second slower than Marquez.
Team-mate Valentino Rossi was 0.041s behind in eighth with Yonny Hernandez and Dani Pedrosa, making a slow start to proceedings, completing the top ten.
Bradley Smith slipped from fifth to 11th in the final minutes of the session but stayed ahead of Pol Espargaro while Cal Crutchlow put his works Ducati three-tenths ahead of Scott Redding’s production Honda.
Leon Camier finished the session in 19th while it was a difficult opener for Michael Laverty who experienced technical problems early on and then got a meatball flag for a smoking motor.
