Ecstar Suzuki’s Aleix Espargaro stayed top of the MotoGP free practice pile in Argentina, outpacing Andrea Iannone and reigning champion Marc Marquez by more than half a second using his softest available Bridgestone rear.
The Spaniard set a 1’38.776 on his 12th lap to stay on top of the timesheets as Ducati’s Andrea Iannone, also on the soft tyre (which is medium in the allocation) put in a 1’39.311 with his last flyer to knock Repsol Honda’s Marquez into third place.
Marquez used the red-banded hard tyre to lap at 1’39.336 but both his and Iannone’s times were under serious threat from Britain’s Cal Crutchlow. The CWM LCR Honda man was on for top spot until the third sector when he encountered Alex De Angelis who slowed him enough that Crutchlow ended the day in fourth place.
Andrea Dovizioso, on his soft tyre, was just 0.031s behind his former team-mate while Jorge Lorenzo, who was 20th in the opening session, jumped up sixth place on his 16th lap of 18, using the hard tyre.
Pol Espargaro had been in third place with four minutes to go but had his last fast lap baulked by Marquez. He ended the day in seventh place and just under nine tenths off the pace of his brother.
Scott Redding used the yellow-banded extra-hard tyre to set his fastest lap to finish in eighth so the Marc VDS man has made that work to his advantage and will be faster on the softer compound.
Valentino Rossi also did a lot of work on the extra-hard and finished just behind Redding in ninth place with Yonny Hernandez in tenth place. Bradley Smith ended in 12th place and Eugene Laverty 18th.
