Marc Marquez narrowly led Dani Pedrosa this afternoon as Repsol Honda enjoyed a comfortable 1-2 in free practice at Misano. The Spanish teammates were separated by just 0.033s but both enjoyed a quarter of a second lead over the quickest Yamaha, Valentino Rossi in third. Having recovered from his warm-up injury sustained at Silverstone, Marquez was straight on the pace in morning practice but Yamaha made the early running in FP2 as Rossi clocked a 1:34.662 to lead teammate Jorge Lorenzo. The Yamahas, boasting a new seamless shift gearbox this weekend, only enjoyed ten minutes of superiority before Marquez overtook them, setting the fastest lap of the day on a 1:34.416.
At the halfway stage, Marquez extended his lead to four tenths of a second with a 1:34.200 and he wouldn’t be headed from there. Pedrosa on the sister bike was the nearest challenger having edged past Rossi and spent the rest of the session chipping away at his teammate’s lead, reducing it to less than a tenth by the chequered flag.
The Yamahas also improved late on but Rossi could only get to within 0.258s while Lorenzo trailed his teammate by half a tenth in fourth. The performance of the day unquestionably came from Aleix Espargaro who took his privateer Aspar machine to fifth with Alvaro Bautista sixth ahead of Michele Pirro and Andrea Dovizioso’s Ducatis.
Stefan Bradl has to work to do tomorrow after going ninth quickest today, crashing at turn six along the way, but no-one has a bigger task ahead of them than Tech 3 with Cal Crutchlow and Bradley Smith tenth and fourteenth respectively, the latter going down at turn one as he chased a top ten spot.
 GP Aperol di San Marino e della Riviera di Rimini – Friday Practice Classification | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pos | Rider | Bike | Team | Lap Time |
| 1 |  Marc Marquez | Honda | Repsol Honda Team | 1:34.200 |
| 2 | Dani Pedrosa | Honda | Repsol Honda Team | 1:34.233 |
| 3 |  Valentino Rossi | Yamaha | Yamaha Factory Racing | 1:34.458 |
| 4 | Jorge Lorenzo | Yamaha | Yamaha Factory Racing | 1:34.495 |
| 5 | Aleix Espargaro | ART | Power Electronics Aspar | 1:34.732 |
| 6 | Alvaro Bautista | Honda | GO&FUN Honda Gresini | 1:34.858 |
| 7 | Michele Pirro | Ducati | Ignite Pramac Racing | 1:34.889 |
| 8 | Andrea Dovizioso | Ducati | Ducati Team | 1:34.901 |
| 9 |  Stefan Bradl | Honda | LCR Honda MotoGP | 1:35.107 |
| 10 |  Cal Crutchlow | Yamaha | Monster Yamaha Tech 3 | 1:35.208 |
| 11 | Andrea Iannone | Ducati | Energy T.I. Pramac Racing | 1:35.218 |
| 12 |  Nicky Hayden | Ducati | Ducati Team | 1:35.392 |
| 13 | Danilo Petrucci | Ioda-Suter | Came IodaRacing Project | 1:35.933 |
| 14 | Bradley Smith | Yamaha | Monster Yamaha Tech 3 | 1:36.004 |
| 15 | Claudio Corti | FTR Kawasaki | NGM Mobile Forward Racing | 1:36.122 |
| 16 | Colin Edwards | FTR Kawasaki | NGM Mobile Forward Racing | 1:36.181 |
| 17 | Hector Barbera | FTR | Avintia Blusens | 1:36.198 |
| 18 |  Randy de Puniet | ART | Power Electronics Aspar | 1:36.283 |
| 19 |  Hiroshi Aoyama | FTR | Avintia Blusens | 1:36.646 |
| 20 |  Karel Abraham | ART | Cardion AB Motoracing | 1:37.310 |
| 21 | Michael Laverty | PBM | Paul Bird Motorsport | 1:37.329 |
| 22 |  Yonny Hernandez | ART | Paul Bird Motorsport | 1:37.334 |
| 23 |  Bryan Staring | FTR Honda | GO&FUN Honda Gresini | 1:37.722 |
| 24 | Lukas Pesek | Ioda-Suter | Came IodaRacing Project | 1:38.962 |
