2014 Misano Friday Practice | Ducati’s Dovi Leads in Rain

2014 Misano Friday Practice Results

Rain affected friday free practice at the Misano Circuit Marco Simoncelli for the San Marino Grand Prix.

How bad were the conditions? Bad enough to cause 62 crashes across all three classes – a new record for crashes in a single day of Grand Prix motorcycle racing.

But when the times were tallied in the premier MotoGP class, the quickest rider was Ducati Team’s Andrea Dovizioso.

Before a passionate crowd at Ducati’s home circuit, the Italian GP13 pilot posted a 1:49.195 in the second free practice – despite crashing in the early session. Regardless, the rain caused for extremely slow conditions; Dovi’s Friday FP2 time was over 15 seconds slower than the Circuit Record – a 1:33.906 posted in 2011 by Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha).

But though the overall time is slow, the remaining riders on Friday all finished over a second behind Dovi.

Joining Dovizioso on the provisional front row (combined times) were Pramac Racing T.I. Ducati’s Yonny Hernandez (1:50.310, FP1) and Repsol Honda’s Dani Pedrosa (1:50.356, FP2).

“Of course I am very happy because it’s always a pleasure to set the quickest time! It was a pity about the crash at the start of this afternoon’s session, but we did manage to understand the reason why and then thanks to the modifications we made for the final run, we made a big step forward and this allowed me to regain feeling in the bike and set the fastest time at the end of the session,” Dovizioso says.

“We have good pace, also in the wet, and I think that we will manage to be quite quick in the dry, seeing as we did a test here less than one month ago.”

The reigning MotoGP Champion Marc Marquez finished fourth overall with a 1:50.519. The Repsol Honda RC213V pilot, who won 11 of 12 rounds so far this season, finished second last season at Misano behind race-winner Lorenzo.

Marquez finished ahead of another Italian favorite – Danillo Petrucci aboard the Octo IodaRacing Team ART. Petrucci posted a 1:50.641.

Rounding out the top 10 were Pol Espargaro (Monster Yamaha Tech3), Stefan Bradl (LCR Honda MotoGP), Jorge Lorenzo (Movistar Yamaha MotoGP), Andrea Iannone (Pramac Racing) and Valentino Rossi (Movistar Yamaha MotoGP).

As for crashers in the MotoGP class, there were many, including nine-time World Champion Rossi, Iannone, who took a heavy hit to his ankle, Aleix Espargaro (NGM Forward Racing), Bradley Smith (Monster Yamaha Tech 3) and Karel Abraham (Cardion AB) all had FP2 falls too.

Teammates Scott Redding and Alvaro Bautista (GO&FUN Honda Gresini) and Alex De Angelis (NGM Forward Racing) also fell in the final minutes of practice but were fortunately unharmed.

The riders return to the Misano Circuit Saturday for two additional free practices and qualifying. As of this writing, there is no rain in the forecast.

2014 Misano MotoGP Friday Practice Results (combined times):