Vinales, Rossi storm times with softs in Thailand FP1

Full MotoGP FP1 results from Thailand

Movistar Yamaha duo Maverick Vinales and Valentino Rossi topped the times in the opening practice session at the new Thailand MotoGP round having opted for late time attacks in FP1.

While Marc Marquez was the long-time leader of the first session, both factory Yamaha riders upped the pace late on to take the top spots with Vinales producing a 1m 31.220s using new front medium and rear soft tyre. Rossi, on a soft front and medium rear, slotted into second place 0.270s back – but all times were around two seconds off the fastest laps from February’s pre-season test.

Ducati’s Andrea Dovizioso grabbed third place in the session with a late lap, albeit four-tenths of a second behind Vinales, with Jack Miller taking fourth place for Pramac Ducati.

That saw MotoGP world championship leader Marquez pushed back to fifth, having not gone for a late time attack, while the Repsol Honda rider also tested the track limits going wide twice in the final 15 minutes.

Johann Zarco, another to target a fast lap time at the end of FP1, moved up to sixth place for Monster Yamaha Tech 3 using new soft and rear tyres with Suzuki’s Andrea Iannone in seventh place.

LCR Honda’s Takaaki Nakagami impressed taking eighth place with his final lap of the session to see Danilo Petrucci ninth with BSB-bound Scott Redding rounding out the top ten for Aprilia.

With Cal Crutchlow 11^th (LCR Honda) and Aleix Espargaro (Aprilia) 12^th, February test’s fastest rider Dani Pedrosa could only manage 13^th place on the FP1 times for Repsol Honda.

Fighting through his Aragon injuries, Jorge Lorenzo ended FP1 down in 17^th place for the factory Ducati squad – 1.3s off timesheet-topper Vinales.