MotoGP Qatar, Free Practice 1: Marquez at the top, Petrucci sixth and Ducati first!

GP Qatar MotoGP Free Practice 1 – The first free practice session of Commercial Bank Grand Prix of Qatar MotoGP, the opening race of the 2015 world championship, saw the reigning champion Marc Marquez excel.

The Honda rider stopped the clock at a time of 1'55"281, finishing 0.076s ahead of his team-mate Dani Pedrosa. The surprises come from third and sixth place.

In fact, third is Aleix Espargarò, riding Suzuki, a manufacturer that returns to MotoGP this year. The Spaniard is 0.404s from the top and precedes the first Yamaha, that of the Majorcan Jorge Lorenzo, the Honda of Cal Crutchlow and the second surprise, the first Ducati, not that of one of the two Andrea, Iannone or Dovizioso, but that of the Terni native Danilo Petrucci, who joined Team Pramac this year.

An amazing performance from the "Petrux", which placed itself behind Andrea Dovizioso and team-mate Yonny Hernandez. His time is also the "child" of a series of circumstances. Petrucci in fact had a problem with the motorbike he was riding, and on which a red warning light had come on on the dashboard. Leaving the motorbike on the side of the track, he ran for a kilometer to return to the pits and take the second motorbike, which had a new medium tyre. It's the one he set his time with, but it's still not the extra-soft tire that Ducati will be able to use in qualifying.

The Top Ten is closed by Valentino Rossi and Andrea Iannone. The Pesaro native worked on his Yamaha M1 trying to try solutions that had not been tested on the last day of testing due to rain. The duo's gap from the top is 0.881s, while the rider from Vasto "stops" 0.153s behind the Pesaro native.

Followed by Pol Espargarò, Scott Redding, Bradley Smith, Stefan Bradl with the Yamaha Open, Karel Abraham and the San Marino Iodaracing Alex de Angelis, who finishes sixteenth at 1.487 from Marquez. The performance of the San Marino rider was great, especially when compared to that of the Aprilias of Alvaro Bautista and Marco Melandri who are at the back.

Photos: Alex Farinelli