Iannone beats Dovizioso by 0.041s on second Qatar test day

The Italian dethroned former Ducati teammate Andrea Dovizioso from the top spot by 0.041s in the final half-hour of the session, courtesy of a 1m54.586s effort.

With the daytime heat of the session's early hours not representative of the conditions expected for the MotoGP season-opening night race at the same track later this month, there was a customarily sluggish start to the day's proceedings.

Ducati works rider Jorge Lorenzo was the only rider to bother with any meaningful running in the first two hours of the session, while the third hour was then largely chalked off with the arrival of light rain.

The track action eventually picked up, with Lorenzo's Ducati teammate Dovizioso assuming a narrow lead over Honda pair Marc Marquez and Cal Crutchlow, before a red flag suspended running 11 minutes before the halfway point.

The culprits were three privateer riders – Pramac Ducati pair Danilo Petrucci and Jack Miller, as well as Tech 3 Yamaha's Johann Zarco – all going down at Turn 1.

Iannone took over out front once the session resumed, before Dovizioso reclaimed the spot with a 1m54.734s effort - the first sub-1m55s lap of the test.

An hour after that, the Ducati man improved to a 1m54.627s, which remained the time to beat until Iannone's late effort.

Reigning champion Marquez crashed with an hour left while running a new Honda aero fairing, but soon rejoined to post a laptime that proved enough for third place.

Zarco was the top Yamaha in fourth, ahead of Iannone's Suzuki teammate Alex Rins and LCR rider Crutchlow.

The top six had all improved on Maverick Vinales' opening-day benchmark, as did the Yamaha rider himself, although going just 0.002s quicker left him only seventh in the order.

Pramac duo Petrucci and Miller were next up, while Honda's Dani Pedrosa made up the top 10 just ahead of Yamaha's Valentino Rossi.

Aprilia's Aleix Espargaro, LCR Honda's Takaaki Nakagami and Lorenzo were the only other riders to lap within a second of Iannone.

Bradley Smith led the way for KTM in 16th, as his regular teammate Pol Espargaro, continuing his recovery from injury, sat out the running in favour of test rider Mika Kallio.

Saturday's session will mark the end of MotoGP pre-season testing, and will conclude with a compulsory half-hour wet test, aimed at studying the impact that spray kicked up by the bikes could have on visibility around the Losail circuit at nighttime.

Testing results

Pos.	#	Rider	Bike	Time	Gap
1	29	Andrea Iannone	Suzuki	1'54.586
2	4	Andrea Dovizioso	Ducati	1'54.627	0.041
3	93	Marc Marquez	Honda	1'54.753	0.167
4	5	Johann Zarco	Yamaha	1'54.874	0.288
5	42	Alex Rins	Suzuki	1'54.967	0.381
6	35	Cal Crutchlow	Honda	1'54.992	0.406
7	25	Maverick Vinales	Yamaha	1'55.051	0.465
8	9	Danilo Petrucci	Ducati	1'55.188	0.602
9	43	Jack Miller	Ducati	1'55.236	0.650
10	26	Dani Pedrosa	Honda	1'55.282	0.696
11	46	Valentino Rossi	Yamaha	1'55.316	0.730
12	41	Aleix Espargaro	Aprilia	1'55.460	0.874
13	30	Takaaki Nakagami	Honda	1'55.539	0.953
14	99	Jorge Lorenzo	Ducati	1'55.562	0.976
15	45	Scott Redding	Aprilia	1'55.708	1.122
16	38	Bradley Smith	KTM	1'55.798	1.212
17	53	Tito Rabat	Ducati	1'55.875	1.289
18	17	Karel Abraham	Ducati	1'55.876	1.290
19	21	Franco Morbidelli	Honda	1'56.074	1.488
20	19	Alvaro Bautista	Ducati	1'56.104	1.518
21	55	Hafizh Syahrin	Yamaha	1'56.263	1.677
22	12	Thomas Luthi	Honda	1'56.295	1.709
23	10	Xavier Simeon	Ducati	1'56.795	2.209
24	36	Mika Kallio	KTM	1'57.218	2.632