Aragon MotoGP: Lorenzo heads Marquez in opening practice

Lorenzo’s benchmark time of 1m48.249s came in the early part of the 45-minute session, the Yamaha rider trading the top spot with Marquez in the opening stages before finding nearly a whole second on the fourth lap of his first run.

Marquez was unable to respond at a track traditionally better suited to Honda, the best lap of his first run being a 1m48.924s.

He later improved this to a 1m48.739s in the final minutes to wrest back second position from Valentino Rossi and disrupt a Yamaha one-two, besting the Italian by a little under a tenth and finishing the session 0.490s behind Lorenzo.

Dani Pedrosa was fourth quickest on the second Repsol Honda, eight tenths off the pace, ahead of the Marc VDS machine of Scott Redding, the Brit fresh off his maiden MotoGP podium at Misano.

Andrea Dovizioso made a late jump to sixth at the chequered flag to finish as top Ducati rider, demoting Tech 3 Yamaha duo Bradley Smith and Pol Espargaro to seventh and eighth.

Cal Crutchlow’s LCR Honda and Andrea Iannone on the second works Ducati completed the top 10, just ahead of an impressive Eugene Laverty aboard the Open class Aspar Honda and the Aprilia of Stefan Bradl.

Hector Barbera (Avintia Ducati) was the only man to crash in a relatively incident-free session, suffering a lowside at Turn 2 in the final 10 minutes.

Practice results:

Pos.	Rider	Bike	Time	Gap
1	Jorge Lorenzo	Yamaha	1'48.249
2	Marc Marquez	Honda	1'48.739	0.490
3	Valentino Rossi	Yamaha	1'48.824	0.575
4	Dani Pedrosa	Honda	1'49.050	0.801
5	Scott Redding	Honda	1'49.354	1.105
6	Andrea Dovizioso	Ducati	1'49.628	1.379
7	Bradley Smith	Yamaha	1'49.790	1.541
8	Pol Espargaro	Yamaha	1'49.868	1.619
9	Cal Crutchlow	Honda	1'50.008	1.759
10	Andrea Iannone	Ducati	1'50.131	1.882
11	Eugene Laverty	Honda	1'50.158	1.909
12	Stefan Bradl	Aprilia	1'50.160	1.911
13	Loris Baz	Yamaha Forward	1'50.275	2.026
14	Alvaro Bautista	Aprilia	1'50.285	2.036
15	Jack Miller	Honda	1'50.287	2.038
16	Aleix Espargaro	Suzuki	1'50.310	2.061
17	Nicky Hayden	Honda	1'50.483	2.234
18	Danilo Petrucci	Ducati	1'50.534	2.285
19	Maverick Vinales	Suzuki	1'50.715	2.466
20	Hector Barbera	Ducati	1'50.728	2.479
21	Yonny Hernandez	Ducati	1'50.729	2.480
22	Karel Abraham	Honda	1'51.496	3.247
23	Mike Di Meglio	Ducati	1'52.142	3.893
24	Alex de Angelis	ART/Aprilia	1'52.202	3.953
25	Toni Elias	Yamaha Forward	1'52.950	4.701