Fabio Quartararo in dominant form as he leads Jack Miller in Misano MotoGP FP1
Making a rare appearance at the top of a MotoGP session, Pol Espargaro led the way following the initial flurry of laps.
One spot ahead of his brother Aleix, the two Spaniards were then bumped down to second and third when another Honda in the form of Alex Marquez went quickest.
As Pol continued to show good speed in fourth, championship leader Fabio Quartararo went quickest after setting a brilliant final sector.
Challenged on several occasions throughout the lap by Maverick Vinales, Alex Rins and Francesco Bagnaia, Quartararo was over two tenths clear in the final sector alone, giving him a near three tenths advantage over Rins come the start-finish line
After improving his time by 0.006s, Quartararo had to abort his next lap after a big moment heading into turn one.
The Yamaha rider was close to losing the front-end of his M1 which led to him picking up his machine and running off the circuit.
Putting his turn one scare behind him, Quartararo then went on to set the first sub 1m 33s lap of the weekend.
Beginning to show their pace, Ducati went quickest but not with the riders you might have expected…
Competing in his third wildcard round of the season, Michele Pirro jumped ahead of Quartararo thanks to a time of 1:32.888s.
After narrowly missing out on top spot with just over ten minutes to go, Vinales’ next effort helped him achieve just that.
Despite losing time to Pirro and Quartararo again in sector four, Vinales came across the line to go nearly two tenths clear.
As Quartararo jumped to the top of the leaderboard late on, team-mate Franco Morbidelli produced a stunning ‘save’ at turn one.
Like Quartararo earlier in the session, Morbidelli momentarily lost the front-end, however, the Italian was considerably closer to coming undone.
With under five minutes remaining Quartararo suffered another scary moment at ‘Curvone’, as he ran off-track before enduring a tank-slapper when crossing the curbs in order to return to the circuit.
Still, it wasn’t enough to stop Quartararo as he went even faster on his final lap which was good enough to put him two tenths clear of Miller.
Andrea Dovizioso, who is competing in his final MotoGP race this weekend, began the weekend with a 16th place finish.
In other news, HRC have confirmed Tetsuta Nagashima will make a wildcard appearance at the Japanese MotoGP later this month.
