Marc Marquez opens up top as Spanish MotoGP kicks off
Spanish MotoGP – Free Practice Results (1)
Repsol Honda's Marc Marquez picked up where he left off to top the first timed session of the 2020 MotoGP World Championship season in Jerez for the Spanish MotoGP, some eight months after the last race weekend action took place in Valencia.
The Spanaird was in sharp form as he and Honda fired a warning show to its rivals on the latest evo RC213V, which has been redeveloped ahead of the season opener as an amalgam of the 2019 bike and 2020 updates after the initial specification was poorly received.
Splitting the pair was testing pace setter Maverick Vinales, who just missed out on Marquez’s top time of 1m 37.350secs by 0.024s, with Cal Crutchlow consolidating Honda's performance with a run to third.
Andrea Dovizioso showed few ill-effects of his recent shoulder injury as he led the Ducati challenge in fourth, ahead of top Suzuki Joan Mir, Jack Miller and Alex Rins.
KTM got its weekend off to a very positive start with Pol Espargaro eighth quickest, ahead of impressive rookie pairing Iker Lecuona and Brad Binder.
Johann Zarco just missed out on the top ten with a run to 11th, ahead of Franco Moribdelli and Valentino Rossi. Having been forced to miss the first 20mins of FP1 due to an unusual penalty as punishment breaking testing regulations, Fabio Quartararo recovered to 17th
A closely matched session with less than a second covering the top 19 riders, there were no fallers throughout with the biggest drama occurring for Aleix Espargaro, who ran off course with no consequence.
