Folger, Pedrosa and Espargaró the best in FP1 at Brno

The World Motorcycle Championship began its activity today at the Czech Republic Grand Prix at the Brno Circuit with the free practice sessions, in which Jonas Folger dominated in Moto3, Dani Pedrosa in MotoGP and Pol Espargaró in Moto2.

The first riders to take to the track were the Moto3 riders, with a somewhat eventful start after the crash of Alberto Moncayo, which meant he could not return to the track, undoubtedly bad luck for the Andalusian who had been pushing hard. There was also a crash by Moretti and later by Techer and Rinaldi, the latter two taken to hospital with injuries.

For their part, we saw a battle between the favourites for the first positions, Maverick Viñales and Sandro Cortese, although with several notable guests such as Danny Kent and above all Jonas Folger. The Team Aspar rider is very strong and closed the first free practice as the fastest after setting a time of 2.10.271, leaving his rivals a little behind, specifically by almost four tenths.

Closing the order with Miguel Oliveira 2nd, Sandro Cortese 3rd, Maverick Viñales 4th, Danny Kent 5th, Alex Rins 6th, Tonucci 7th, Kornfeil 8th, Rossi 9th and Khairuddin 10th. As for the Spanish riders, the rest are 11th Vázquez, 12th Salom, Martín 14th, Faubel 15th, Márquez 16th, I. Viñales 19th, Olivé 21st, Moncayo 32nd.

In MotoGP the fastest was Dani Pedrosa, the Catalan setting a lap time of 1.57.003, close to 1.56, although the session was also somewhat eventful with the crash of Danilo Petrucci at turn 13. Shortly after, there was a fairly serious problem with dirt on the track that caused many difficulties for the riders, prompting a red flag to clean the most problematic areas.

There was a lot of battling between Pedrosa and Lorenzo, the fastest without any doubt, swapping positions throughout the session, until Pedrosa finally set that time, leaving Lorenzo just over a tenth behind, while Dovi was also quite close at 0.186s and Cal Crutchlow was almost half a second back.

Closing the top 10 with Spies 5th, Bautista 6th, Rossi 7th, Bradl 8th, De Puniet 9th, Hernández 10th, Espargaró 11th, Elías 12th, Pasini 13th, Edwards 14th, Pirro 15th, Silva 16th, Ellison 17th, Petrucci 18th. The best CRT was Randy’s, with Yonny behind him despite his crash at turn 3.

In the Moto2 category, the fastest was Pol Espargaró, setting a lap time of 2.03.084 on his last lap after the chequered flag, with two final sector times that were scandalously quick, a really impressive lap for him. Behind him was Thomas Luthi, who dominated almost the entire free practice session, finally finishing 0.167s off the top spot.

A little further back, the top 5 was made up of Simone Corsi 3rd, Mika Kallio 4th and Andrea Iannone 5th, while the top 10 included Marc Márquez 7th, Nico Terol 8th, Bradley Smith 9th and Johann Zarco 10th.

Closing the positions of the Spanish riders were 11th Axel Pons, 15th Tito Rabat, 17th Julián Simón, 20th Jordi Torres, 28th Ricky Cardús and 33rd Elena Rosell.