Qatar MotoGP: Marquez tops warm-up despite crashing
Defending MotoGP champion Marc Marquez led the way in Sunday's extended warm-up session for the Qatar Grand Prix, despite suffering a crash.
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
After the cancellation of the whole of Saturday's running due to bad weather, warm-up was extended to 30 minutes from the usual 20 across all three classes at Losail.
Despite a brief rain shower early on Sunday afternoon, warm-up was held entirely in dry conditions, with the riders wasting no time to head out on track.
Ducati rider Jorge Lorenzo led the way early on, before being knocked off the top spot by the Aspar bike of Alvaro Bautista - who in turn was deposed by Lorenzo's factory teammate Andrea Dovizioso.
The Italian veteran clocked a best lap of 1m56.037s, which was shortly beaten by Marquez with a time just 0.006s faster on the Repsol Honda.
Marquez followed that up with a 1m55.728s just shy of the halfway mark, with that effort standing as the best of the session - despite the Spaniard having an innocuous low-side crash just a few minutes later at Turn 14.
Dovizioso was the only other rider to break the 1m56s barrier, going second with a time 0.189s slower than Marquez.
Tech 3 Yamaha rider Johann Zarco made a last-minute jump to third, ending up 0.275s off the pace and just 0.005s up on fourth-placed Aleix Espargaro on the Aprilia.
Poleman Maverick Vinales was sixth-fastest on the Yamaha, 0.001s shy of Bautista in fifth and 0.357s slower than Marquez.
Completing the top 10 were Jonas Folger on the second Tech 3 machine, Andrea Iannone's works Suzuki, Lorenzo and Karel Abraham (Aspar Ducati).
Valentino Rossi ended up only 13th-fastest, 0.896s slower than Marquez and a little over half a second down on factory Yamaha teammate Vinales.
Warm-up results:
Pos. | # | Rider | Bike | Time | Gap |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 93 | Marc Marquez | Honda | 1'55.728 | |
2 | 4 | Andrea Dovizioso | Ducati | 1'55.917 | 0.189 |
3 | 5 | Johann Zarco | Yamaha | 1'56.003 | 0.275 |
4 | 41 | Aleix Espargaro | Aprilia | 1'56.008 | 0.280 |
5 | 19 | Alvaro Bautista | Ducati | 1'56.084 | 0.356 |
6 | 25 | Maverick Viñales | Yamaha | 1'56.085 | 0.357 |
7 | 94 | Jonas Folger | Yamaha | 1'56.114 | 0.386 |
8 | 29 | Andrea Iannone | Suzuki | 1'56.181 | 0.453 |
9 | 99 | Jorge Lorenzo | Ducati | 1'56.290 | 0.562 |
10 | 17 | Karel Abraham | Ducati | 1'56.317 | 0.589 |
11 | 35 | Cal Crutchlow | Honda | 1'56.399 | 0.671 |
12 | 42 | Alex Rins | Suzuki | 1'56.416 | 0.688 |
13 | 46 | Valentino Rossi | Yamaha | 1'56.624 | 0.896 |
14 | 26 | Dani Pedrosa | Honda | 1'56.643 | 0.915 |
15 | 9 | Danilo Petrucci | Ducati | 1'56.684 | 0.956 |
16 | 8 | Hector Barbera | Ducati | 1'56.722 | 0.994 |
17 | 43 | Jack Miller | Honda | 1'56.758 | 1.030 |
18 | 45 | Scott Redding | Ducati | 1'56.819 | 1.091 |
19 | 53 | Tito Rabat | Honda | 1'56.907 | 1.179 |
20 | 76 | Loris Baz | Ducati | 1'56.962 | 1.234 |
21 | 38 | Bradley Smith | KTM | 1'57.444 | 1.716 |
22 | 44 | Pol Espargaro | KTM | 1'57.457 | 1.729 |
23 | 22 | Sam Lowes | Aprilia | 1'57.712 | 1.984 |
Be part of Motorsport community
Join the conversationShare Or Save This Story
Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
Top Comments