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Practice report

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.

Marc Marquez, Repsol Honda Team

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.#RiderBikeTimeGap
1 93 spain Marc Marquez  Honda 1'55.728  
2 4 italy Andrea Dovizioso  Ducati 1'55.917 0.189
3 5 france Johann Zarco  Yamaha 1'56.003 0.275
4 41 spain Aleix Espargaro  Aprilia 1'56.008 0.280
5 19 spain Alvaro Bautista  Ducati 1'56.084 0.356
6 25 spain Maverick Viñales  Yamaha 1'56.085 0.357
7 94 germany Jonas Folger  Yamaha 1'56.114 0.386
8 29 italy Andrea Iannone  Suzuki 1'56.181 0.453
9 99 spain Jorge Lorenzo  Ducati 1'56.290 0.562
10 17 czech_republic Karel Abraham  Ducati 1'56.317 0.589
11 35 united_kingdom Cal Crutchlow  Honda 1'56.399 0.671
12 42 spain Alex Rins  Suzuki 1'56.416 0.688
13 46 italy Valentino Rossi  Yamaha 1'56.624 0.896
14 26 spain Dani Pedrosa  Honda 1'56.643 0.915
15 9 italy Danilo Petrucci  Ducati 1'56.684 0.956
16 8 spain Hector Barbera  Ducati 1'56.722 0.994
17 43 australia Jack Miller  Honda 1'56.758 1.030
18 45 united_kingdom Scott Redding  Ducati 1'56.819 1.091
19 53 spain Tito Rabat  Honda 1'56.907 1.179
20 76 france Loris Baz  Ducati 1'56.962 1.234
21 38 united_kingdom Bradley Smith  KTM 1'57.444 1.716
22 44 spain Pol Espargaro  KTM 1'57.457 1.729
23 22 united_kingdom Sam Lowes  Aprilia 1'57.712 1.984

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