Vinales fastest when Marquez breaks his foot

Marquez has had a bruise test so far and crashed four times in the first four days before having a fifth on Thursday.

The LCR driver Highsider on the right hand turn of Turn 9 which resulted in a brief red flag and resulted in a small fracture in his foot that ended his day prematurely.

By the end of the first hour of track action, only two riders had set lap times while Yamaha’s Vinales was traveling back and forth between the pit lane to practice the starts.

Ducati test rider Michele Pirro topped the timesheet after the first hour with 1: 57.345 minutes, while Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaro took the lead at the end of the second hour with 1: 54.942 minutes while doing the setup work he did on Wednesday could not due to a technical problem.

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Petronas SRT’s Franco Morbidelli pulled away from Espargaro with 1: 54.588 minutes and took the lead at the end of the third hour before Hondas Pol Espargaro was a little more than 30 minutes faster in four hours with 1: 54.103 minutes.

The Honda rider suffered his first crash on the RC213V earlier in the day, but that didn’t stop him from doing over 50 laps as his adaptation to the bike continued. His brother Aleix returned to the top about an hour later with the first lap under 1:54 minutes – the Aprilia driver shot in 1: 53.869 minutes, which he improved to 1: 53.640 minutes shortly afterwards.

With just under two hours remaining, Francesco Bagnaia continued to show Ducati’s form in Qatar with a time of 1: 53.444 minutes to reach the fastest of them all. His time was beaten by Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo 22 minutes from the checkered flag. The Frenchman was 1: 53.398 minutes ahead while continuing to work on the M1 chassis in 2021.

With eight minutes to go, Quartararo’s works Yamaha team-mate Vinales set the second-best time of the test with 1: 53.244 minutes, which remained unchallenged until the end of the session.

Vinales, who tried three M1s on Thursday, ended the day 0.079 seconds ahead of Morbidelli, who jumped ahead of his former teammate Quartararo in the final minutes.

Bagnaia was a top Ducati runner after running a racing simulation on the Italian brand’s new aerodynamic fairing, with Aprilias Espargaro completing the top 5.

The Suzuki duo of the reigning world champions Joan Mir and Alex Rins was the last to take to the track on Thursday, with the two completing 37 and 44 laps respectively in sixth and seventh place.

Valentino Rossi from SRT closed the gap to the leaders on Thursday when he tested various things and ended the day 0.759 seconds behind in eighth place ahead of Pramacs Johann Zarco, Hondas Espargaro and previous overall test pacesetter Jack Miller at the factory Ducati.

Pramacs Jorge Martin – who had an accident while trying the middle front tire today – was top rookie in 14th place after completing a time attack for the first time, with the Spaniard also running a long run.

He led his rookie colleague Enea Bastianini (Avintia), with KTM with Brad Binder in 16th place and with Miguel Oliveira in 18th place, with Marquez between them.

Top 10 times

Item	WOMEN	driver	bicycle	Time	gap	Round
1	12th	Maverick Viñales	Yamaha	1’53.244		58
2	21	F. Morbidelli	Yamaha	1’53.323	0.079	62
3	20th	Fabio Quartararo	Yamaha	1’53.398	0.154	52
4th	63	F. Bagnaia	Ducati	1’53.444	0.200	53
5	41	Aleix Espargaró	Aprilia	1’53.640	0.396	56
6th	36	Joan Mir	Suzuki	1’53.827	0.583	37
7th	42	Alex kidneys	Suzuki	1’53.860	0.616	44
8th	46	Valentino Rossi	Yamaha	1’53.993	0.749	52
9	5	Johann Zarco	Ducati	1’54.056	0.812	71
10	44	Pol Espargaró	Honda	1’54.103	0.859	6th