Pedrosa, Crutchlow and Iannone lead FP1
Dani Pedrosa threw his name into the mix of possible challengers at the second round of the 2018 MotoGP season by topping the first free practice session of the weekend at the Termas de Rio Hondo Circuit in Argentina.
As riders encountered a low-grip circuit in the early stages of the weekend, times gradually came down through the 45 minutes, with Pedrosa’s 1m 40.303s effort the quickest of them all.
Dani Pedrosa threw his name into the mix of possible challengers at the second round of the 2018 MotoGP season by topping the first free practice session of the weekend at the Termas de Rio Hondo Circuit in Argentina.
As riders encountered a low-grip circuit in the early stages of the weekend, times gradually came down through the 45 minutes, with Pedrosa’s 1m 40.303s effort the quickest of them all.
It was close too, with Cal Crutchlow making it a Honda one-two, the Englishman’s best effort just 0.042s back of the Spaniard. Suzuki’s Andrea Iannone was a heartening third, 0.041s back of Crutchlow.
Come the end of the session, times were fairly quick. Not only was Pedrosa’s time just 1.3s back of the race record for the circuit (a small number compared to the earlier Moto2 and Moto3 sessions), it was the fastest time in any MotoGP FP1 session at this track.
Behind the front three, Johann Zarco was fourth with a time of 1m 40.614s with Pramac Ducati’s Jack Miller, who impressed after leading parts of the session, eventually dropping to fifth.
Having started off in typical blazing fashion, Marc Marquez was close to half a second back of his Repsol Honda team-mate in sixth, ahead of Valentino Rossi (seventh), Andrea Dovizioso (eighth) and Jorge Lorenzo (ninth), who continued to wear an expression of frustrated exasperation throughout the session.
Danilo Petrucci was tenth after crashing out at the precarious turn 13, an incident that came soon after Marquez spectacularly saved a front end moment at low speed at the same turn. It was a dramatic morning for the reigning world champion, who only narrowly avoided collecting Viñales at turn five after running in too hot as the session neared its end.
