Rossi beats Marquez by 0.018s in Brno MotoGP test

Rossi set his 1m55.162s with a minute left on the clock, edging Marquez, who held first for the final three of the test's eight hours, out by 0.018s.

The Italian's team Yamaha tested a new aero fairing on the YZR-M1, and both of its riders ended up in the top three with Maverick Vinales taking third.

Vinales was leading the way for the majority of the session and, while he improved after he lost first place, the 22-year-old still ended up third.

Jorge Lorenzo took fourth, while his Ducati teammate Andrea Dovizioso was only 11th. The Italian trialled Ducati's radical new fairing, that was introduced for the Czech Grand Prix and was used by Lorenzo over the weekend, for the first time.

Tech 3 Yamaha's Johann Zarco was fifth followed by Cal Crutchlow (LCR Honda), who was close behind Vinales in second in the early stages but ended his day at halfway point to rest his back, which is still not fully healed from his Saturday FP3 crash.

Marquez's teammate Dani Pedrosa was seventh, beating Jonas Folger (Tech 3 Yamaha) by 35 thousandths of a second.

Andrea Iannone was the fastest of three Suzukis, as the two full-timers were joined by test rider Takuya Tsuda.

While Iannone crashed in the morning and spent the majority of the day on the bottom half of the order, a late improvement put him ninth, as Alex Rins and Tsuda were 14th and 18th respectively.

Aprilia's Aleix Espargaro completed the top 10.

KTM duo Pol Espargaro and Bradley Smith, the former scoring the team's first top 10 result on Sunday, were 15th and 16th respectively.

Ducati satellite teams Pramac, Aspar and Avintia did not take part in the test.

Test results

Pos	Rider	Team	Fastest lap	Lead. Gap
1	Valentino Rossi	Yamaha	1:55.162
2	Marc Marquez	Honda	1:55.180	0.018
3	Maverick Vinales	Yamaha	1:55.335	0.173
4	Jorge Lorenzo	Ducati	1:55.542	0.380
5	Johann Zarco	Yamaha Tech 3	1:55.691	0.529
6	Cal Crutchlow	LCR Honda	1:55.768	0.606
7	Dani Pedrosa	Honda	1:55.795	0.633
8	Jonas Folger	Yamaha Tech 3	1:55.830	0.668
9	Andrea Iannone	Suzuki	1:56.123	0.961
10	Aleix Espargaro	Aprilia	1:56.263	1.101
11	Andrea Dovizioso	Ducati	1:56.403	1.241
12	Tito Rabat	Marc VDS Honda	1:56.535	1.373
13	Jack Miller	Marc VDS Honda	1:56.634	1.472
14	Alex Rins	Suzuki	1:56.637	1.475
15	Pol Espargaro	KTM	1:56.668	1.506
16	Bradley Smith	KTM	1:56.976	1.814
17	Sam Lowes	Aprilia	1:57.851	2.689
18	Takuya Tsuda	Suzuki	1:59.749	4.587