Jorge Lorenzo will head into Saturday’s final practice session with a slight advantage over Marc Marquez after a day full of incident at Brno. Lorenzo leads the reigning champion by fourteen thousandths of a second and was one of the few leading contenders not to hit trouble in rising temperatures in the Czech Republic.
Marquez suffered a minor spill in the morning session after running through the gravel at turn thirteen but the major drama took place at that corner in the afternoon, with his teammate at the centre of it. At the end of the back straight, Dani Pedrosa’s Honda began leaking oil from the front fork, causing the Spaniard to highside and bringing down Valentino Rossi too.
Pedrosa will continue this weekend despite a bruised ankle while Rossi escaped any injury. The championship leader later gave his version of events while admitting he is once again playing catch-up to his teammate.
“Unfortunately Pedrosa had a problem with his bike and it lost some oil and I crashed. This afternoon was difficult for everybody because the track is very slippery and the amount of grip is very low and at the same time there are a lot of bumps, so every time I entered the corner I was pretty much at the limit. At the end of the afternoon it went a bit better and I went into fourth position, but I have to recover a disadvantage, especially the one to Jorge, who seems to have the best pace.”
Behind the top two, Andrea Iannone took third ahead of Pedrosa with Andrea Dovizioso pushing Rossi down to sixth. Bradley Smith was another rider to crash this afternoon, seeing him slip behind Pol Espargaro to eighth, while Aleix Espargaro and Cal Crutchlow complete the top ten.
