After last year’s power outages, today’s MotoGP’s free practice at the Motorland Aragon circuit was hugely delayed after Moto3 FP1 was red flagged following Danny Kent’s crash with his Mahindra.
The four remaining minutes of the Moto3 session were then cancelled to clean up the oil spillage, that due to wet conditions of the track surface needed a much more thorough and longer clean-up procedure than usual, postponing MotoGP session for more than an hour.
The track conditions were again the worst for the MotoGP riders, half dry and half wet (where intermediate tires would be necessary but not included in the riders alottment due to question of costs) and almost useless in trying to find a proper set-up and with conditions the same as what happened on Friday at the Misano GP.
A day wasted as most of the riders sat out both sessions (with rule changes still being discussed to force the riders to put in a least six laps for the paying fans, but with problems tied to safety risks and tires) while the weather forecast calls for rain showers on Saturday and dry on race day.
The first fifteen minutes saw only eight riders out on soft full wets, as several corners were still very wet and temperatures were low, but a dry line began to show and Colin Edwards decided to join the field in the final fifteen minutes, while the rest of the riders sat it out, (Dani Pedrosa tried a lap but ran off track and didn’t complete it and returned to the safety of his garage), as Yamaha and Honda may be comforted by the fact that they have data from their previous test at Aragon earlier this month.
The quickest rider was Ducati’s Nicky Hayden in 2.
04.
890 and he was using the new chassis on the GP12 Evo machine that he briefly tested in the private post-race test at Misano before his hand injury flared up forcing him to quit.
Team mate Valentino Rossi was second fastest and the rider who put in more laps than anyone, 15, but he was more than eight tenths adrift.
Both riders were trying to see if the improvements that they had at Misano can be transferred to the Aragon circuit, or if Rossi’s 2nd place was just due to the fact that he had tested at Misano and had a dry set-up data that the other teams didn’t have.
Aleix Espargaro was third and almost 2.
5 seconds adrift followed by Danilo Petrucci, Hector Barbera, David Salom on double duty between the Superbike championship and riding for Avintia Blusens.
Colin Edwards was seventh with Yonny Hernandez and Karel Abraham who did one lap.
MotoGP Aragon FP1 results:01- Nicky Hayden – Ducati Team – Ducati Desmosedici GP12 – 2’04.
890 02- Valentino Rossi – Ducati Team – Ducati Desmosedici GP12 – + 0.
860 03- Aleix Espargaro – Power Electronics Aspar – ART GP12 – + 2.
488 04- Danilo Petrucci – CAME Iodaracing Project – Ioda Suter BMW – + 3.
816 05- Hector Barbera – Pramac Racing Team – Ducati Desmosedici GP12 – + 3.
983 06- David Salom – Avintia Blusens – BQR FTR – + 4.
346 07- Colin Edwards – NGM Mobile Forward Racing – Suter BMW – + 4.
458 08- Yonny Hernandez – Avintia Blusens – BQR FTR – + 5.
431 09- Karel Abraham – Cardion AB Motoracing – Ducati Desmosedici GP12 – + 10.
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