Maverick Vinales and Alex Rins all but matched each other on another day of KTM domination at Jerez. The pair, third and fourth in the 2012 Moto3 championship, were separated by six thousandths of a second on Wednesday as Vinales took the honours for the fourth testing day out of five in 2013.
Wet weather prevailed on day one, allowing Danny Webb to top the timesheets for Ambrogio Racing but a return to more stable conditions saw the championship favourites come to the fore, eventually. The morning session was disrupted by fog, enabling newcomer Juanfran Guevara to lead the way, but once that had cleared Vinales was the man to beat, setting a 1:46.805 to edge out Rins.
Two more riders expected to contest the title completed the top four in the form of Luis Salom and Jonas Folger while Miguel Oliveira took a superb fifth for Mahindra. Guevara proved in the afternoon that his early performance wasn’t completely fog-assisted by finishing sixth, leading Brad Binder and Efren Vazquez on the second Mahindra.
Danny Webb kept up his strong performance with ninth overall, although he did suffer a crash on day two, with the top ten completed by Jakub Kornfeil. Like Webb, John McPhee fell down the order overnight but his decline was greater, leaving him 29th overall.
