Movistar Yamaha’s Jorge Lorenzo picked up from where he left off yesterday and bagged top spot in today’s Jerez MotoGP test but left it until late to depose Marc Marquez, who was a surprise participant.
Yesterday, Marquez said there was no way he would be riding today as there was no point in risking a crash and further damaging his broken finger, but ride he did and was fastest early doors with a 1’38.668 while testing a new swingarm. He limited himself to 31 laps with the fourth his best.
“I put in a few laps, as we planned last night, basically just to test out a swingarm. HRC engineers wanted us to analyse it to find out if we could use it in the coming races, to see where we can improve and which direction to continue working in,” said Marquez.
“We have drawn some very positive conclusions that have allowed us to improve in some aspects today, and we have obtained a lot of information for further development with things that have been a little bit more difficult, for example corner entry.”
Lorenzo set a 1’38.508 on his 49th lap of 52 but was chased hard by team-mate Valentino Rossi who ended on 0.042s behind yesterday’s race winner. The Doctor put in 66 laps and his fastest was also in his final run.
Britain’s Cal Crutchlow followed up his fourth place in the race with a third on the test timesheet. He took the CWM LCR Honda to a 1’38.814 but his time was earlier on in the day.
Aleix Espargaro also set his best time earlier in the day, setting a 1’38.890 to go 0.078s faster than Marquez, while Bradley Smith was a little under four-tenths off the pace with a 1’39.339.
Yonny Hernandez, Scott Redding and Maverick Vinales finished in front of an off-form Pol Espargaro, who completed the top ten. Eugene Laverty ended in 15th place, just behind Aspar team-mate Nicky Hayden.
