Maverick Vinales led at the end of the official post-Catalan GP MotoGP test at the Circuit de Barcelona Catalunya, posting a late flyer to head Franco Morbidelli and Marc Marquez.
Vinales set a 1: 38.967, a time nearly half a second faster than Fabio Quartararo’s pole effort of 1:39.484 from Saturday’s qualifying session. Six riders in total lapped beneath the Petronas SRT riders’ time, including the Frenchman himself who managed a time 0.058 quicker.
Alex Rins was fourth quickest just ahead of Quartararo, while Francesco Bagnaia and Takaaki Nakagami were seventh and eighth quickest repectively.
The top ten were rounded out by Joan Mir’s Suzuki, Jack Miller’s Pramac Ducati and Cal Crutchlow’s LCR-run Honda.
The entire MotoGP field, aside from Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaro who missed the test with a fractured femur he picked up in a clash with team-mate Bradley Smith during the race yesterday, returned to the 2.8 mile circuit for the one-day official test session.
Several factory test riders were also in action, including KTM tester and ex-Honda MotoGP racer Dani Pedrosa who managed to complete 51 laps across the day aboard the RC16, setting the slowest time of 1:41.824.
Most riders were testing their current race bikes to try and learn as much as possible for the following rounds, but there were a couple changes.
Nakagami was sampling his LCR team-mate Crutchlow’s 2019-spec Honda RC-213V, while Marquez had a go on Nakagami’s 2018 machine with a modified fairing for testing purposes.
Vinales completed the most laps during the day with a mammoth total of 98, while there was only one stoppage throughout the session.
This was for Jorge Lorenzo, who crashed his Honda this morning exiting Turn 7. The Mallorcan was fine and rejoined the test in the afternoon, but managed just the 17th fastest time.
