Alex Rins fronted the opening practice session for the Catalan Grand Prix, the Suzuki man firing in a commanding 1:40.101s in the closing stages to head Aprilia’s Maverick Vinales.
The session ended up being a largely quiet one as the teams and riders focused mainly on working towards Sunday’s race on used tires, Yamaha’s Franco Morbidelli leading the way for the bulk of the test in what was a clear improvement for the Italian who has only scored a sole top ten result so far this term.
Rins though headed out for a fast run in the closing laps and duly moved to the head of the times with a 1:40.631s effort initially before improving on his following tour by over half-a-second to leave well clear of the rest.
His gambit would ultimately not be beaten across the remaining portion of the session, though his leading advantage would be reduced to 0.195s by Vinales, who put together a tidy lap on his RS-GP towards the end.
Morbidelli would hang onto the third ahead of Aleix Espargaro’s sister Aprilia and Pol Espargaro, who completed the top five on his factory Honda.
LCR Honda duo Takaaki Nakagami and Alex Marquez scored sixth and seventh ahead of KTM’s Miguel Oliveira, while the second Suzuki GSX-RR of Joan Mir and Gresini Ducati’s Enea Bastianini rounded off the leading ten.
Reigning MotoGP world champion Fabio Quartararo spent the entire session on a single set of tires as he looked to prioritize his race performance en-route to 13th in the times ahead of Francesco Bagnaia, who did likewise.
Raul Fernandez was fastest rookie in 12th having opted to use a new soft-compound rear tire in the final stanza, with Mugello standout’s Marco Bezzecchi, Luca Marini and Italian GP pole-man Fabio Di Gianantonio ending up 16th, 17th and 19th respectively.
Jorge Martin was the session’s sole crasher, the Pramac pilot going down at Turn 2 with around a quarter of the test remaining – the Spaniard soon returning to his box unhurt.