Valencia GP | Marquez tops tricky FP1
It was Marc Marquez who showed his command at opening session of Valencia GP as Miller followed his times closely before crashing.
Puddles on track and rain pouring down heavily meant session was red flagged after the 8 minutes of running.
Few riders had moments on track and Vinales was one of them, but it was Marquez who was topping the session when the red flag came out
After a half an hour delay session was resumed, it had stopped raining but track was still damp but surprisingly was improving and coming to the riders. Everyone was quickly out on track with full wets on.
For first half of the session it was Marquez, Petrucci and Miller who traded time at tops and took chunks out of each other’s time. Before Marquez settling on the top of the time sheets but his time was beaten by Petrucci.
Pedrosa on his last ever FP1 was showing some pace, being just few tenths shy of his teammate on P2.
With 7 minutes left on the clock on his second run Marquez took a massive chunk out of Petrucci going a 0.692s faster with a lap time of 1:39,787.
Petrucci few moments later improved his lap to decrease the gap between him and the leader, but his time wasn’t enough to keep him at bay from fast coming teammate Miller, who slotted himself between Marquez and Petrucci.
Iannone was looking sharp around as well going P7 on his first lap of 2nd run and then later improving it to p4.
As the tricky session closed it was Marquez who improved his benchmark time to take cheqeured flag with a time of 1:39.767, a clear two hundredths of a second faster than his previous best.
Miller’s time before crashing was enough to earn him the P2 a one tenth of a second shy of Marc’s time and 0.036 further ahead of Petrucci.
In late improvers Dovizioso and Pedrosa were the riders whose last laps earn them P4 and P5 respectively.
Iannone after looking strong earlier ended P6 ahead of Vinales who made many late changes on his bike to earn him P7 ahead of Pirro, Pol Espargaro and Rins.
Crashing Riders:
For the wet session only three riders were caught on dirt, first one was Alvaro Bautista, who at turn 2 went too hard on front brakes and lost the bike.
Second one was Jack Miller after nailing the best middle sector lost the bike at Turn 10.
Xavier Simeonn was the 3rd rider to crash in the closing stages of the session.
FP1 Time Sheet:
