Rossi 'officially' fastest despite red flag fall.

Day one of the first Official MotoGP IRTA test of 2006, at Barcelona, has ended with world champion Valentino Rossi leading an all Yamaha top three - despite ending his day early after a fall, which brought out the red flags.

Following on from the 125cc and 250cc categories' sessions at the Circuit de Catalunya, which have been running since Monday, the MotoGP teams took to the track this morning - with Rizla Suzuki's John Hopkins and Colin Edwards starting promisingly, before team-mate Rossi took to the top at 1pm local time.

The Camel Yamaha rider had only begun testing just after 12.30, and within six laps he was already heading the timesheets. The Italian later clocked an even faster time of 1min 43.608secs - a few tenths off his fastest lap in the 2005 GP - to confirm his dominance.

However, the flamboyant Italian did suffer a harmless fall during the eight-hour long session - which brought out the red flags - and The Doctor decided to call an end to his testing for the day after the incident, which occurred just after 3.30pm. Nonetheless, his time stood strong for the remainder of the afternoon, and he headed up a Yamaha one-two-three, with team-mate Edwards and Tech 3 rider Carlos Checa trailing him.

It was something of a special occasion for Checa, who after moving from Ducati to Honda last year lost his MotoGP ride in early January. However a last-minute package was put together by the Tech 3 team and Dunlop to allow the Spaniard to continue this season, and their faith in one of the most experienced riders in the sport got at least some small reward today.

Behind the Yamaha trio came the newly-liveried Rizla Suzuki of Hopkins, with Repsol rider Nicky Hayden top Honda rider in fifth, and Shinya Nakano in sixth place on the Kawasaki. Ducati's new rider Sete Gibernau was seventh fastest at his home track, with former team-mate and last year's championship runner-up Marco Melandri just behind him. Toni Elias was ninth fastest after his move from Yamaha to Honda over winter, with Makoto Tamada finishing tenth.

The weekend's fastest laps are likely to occur on Sunday, when the third annual BMW M Award takes place. A forty-minute televised session in which riders compete to earn the fastest lap starts at just after 2pm local time, with a brand new BMW Z4 M Roadster going up for grabs for the winner. The previous winners of the competition are Rossi and Gibernau.

Meanwhile, earlier this week, Jorge Lorenzo was the fastest 250cc rider on Wednesday, and subsequently repeated his leaderboard-topping form in Thursday's eight-hour session. Having set a fastest lap of 1min 46.563secs he was only three-tenths off Dani Pedrosa's pole-winning time from last season at this track.

Despite suffering a crash half an hour before the end of the session, Alex de Angelis came in second quickest with a time of 1min 47.232secs, whilst 250cc's surprise package was Czech rider Jakub Smrz, who continued his intriguing success at the Circuit de Catalunya finishing third fastest.

The big news from 125cc was the crash suffered by Thomas L?thi. Switzerland's reigning World Champion fractured his left collarbone in the incident, and doctors have recommended that he misses the MotoGP Official Test in Jerez next week in order to recover without surgery. The Swiss rider is still expected to compete in the first race of the season, the Gran Premio betandwin.com de Espa?a on March 26th.

His main rival from last year, Finland's Mika Kallio, topped the leaderboard with a fastest lap of 1min 50.849secs, three tenths of a second off Hector Barbera's 2004 lap record. Lukas Pesek and Alvaro Bautista came in second and third, whilst the top five was completed by Sergio Gadea and Angel Rodriguez.

Cloud is predicted for tomorrow, Saturday, with a forecasted drop in temperature and light rain for Sunday's final MotoGP Official Test day at the Circuit de Catalunya. The second and final Official test will then take place one week later, at Jerez.