Valencia MotoGP: Marc Marquez fastest in delayed wet practice one

Reigning MotoGP champion Marc Marquez was fastest in the opening practice at Valencia, which was red-flagged early on due to weather conditions.

The session started under soaking wet track conditions, which are forecast for the whole of the final weekend of the campaign.

The red flag came out just seven minutes in, soon after Alex Rins impressively but narrowly avoided a crash the long left-handed penultimate corner and Maverick Vinales ran through a huge puddle at the exit of the final bend.

It took nearly 30 minutes for the rain to ease off and practice to be restarted, and the pace then rapidly improved in the first half of the session.

Marquez dominated the proceedings by improving numerous times and leading by over a second but when he pitted the field quickly caught up and Danilo Petrucci demoted him to second with a 1m40.479s.

But once Marquez returned to the track he set a 1m39.787s in just two laps, a time that was not matched by the rest of the field.

Jack Miller quickly closed the gap to just 0.086 seconds and he looked set to improve further with just two minutes on the clock, only to crash at the Turn 10 right-handed kink.

Marquez then lowered his benchmark by another two hundredths of a second after the chequered flag fell to increase his gap over Miller to 0.106s.

Miller's Pramac Ducati team-mate Petrucci took third, with Petrucci's future factory team-mate Andrea Dovizioso completing the top four.

Dani Pedrosa kicked off his farewell weekend in fifth, followed by Andrea Iannone and Maverick Vinales - the Yamaha rider ending up more than a second off the pace.

Ducati wildcard Michele Pirro was eighth as KTM's Pol Espargaro and Suzuki's Alex Rins completed the top 10.

Valentino Rossi had an off-track moment and was in the end only 12th ahead of fellow Yamaha rider Johann Zarco.

Stefan Bradl, who is replacing the injured Cal Crutchlow at LCR Honda, was 16th, while the recovering Jorge Lorenzo took 19th.

Along with Miller, fellow Ducati privateers Alvaro Bautista and Xavier Simeon also crashed in the dying stages of the practice.

FP1 times

Pos	Rider	Team	Bike	Time	Gap	Laps
1	Marc Marquez	Honda	Honda	1m39.767s	-	18
2	Jack Miller	Pramac Ducati	Ducati	1m39.873s	0.106s	13
3	Danilo Petrucci	Pramac Ducati	Ducati	1m39.907s	0.140s	19
4	Andrea Dovizioso	Ducati	Ducati	1m40.179s	0.412s	14
5	Dani Pedrosa	Honda	Honda	1m40.467s	0.700s	18
6	Andrea Iannone	Suzuki	Suzuki	1m40.685s	0.918s	19
7	Maverick Vinales	Yamaha	Yamaha	1m40.772s	1.005s	17
8	Michele Pirro	Ducati	Ducati	1m40.836s	1.069s	17
9	Pol Espargaro	KTM	KTM	1m40.892s	1.125s	21
10	Alex Rins	Suzuki	Suzuki	1m40.965s	1.198s	22
11	Aleix Espargaro	Aprilia	Aprilia	1m40.967s	1.200s	15
12	Valentino Rossi	Yamaha	Yamaha	1m41.015s	1.248s	22
13	Johann Zarco	Tech3 Yamaha	Yamaha	1m41.146s	1.379s	22
14	Karel Abraham	Aspar Ducati	Ducati	1m41.160s	1.393s	19
15	Xavier Simeon	Avintia Ducati	Ducati	1m41.277s	1.510s	14
16	Stefan Bradl	LCR Honda	Honda	1m41.479s	1.712s	14
17	Bradley Smith	KTM	KTM	1m41.489s	1.722s	17
18	Franco Morbidelli	MVDS Honda	Honda	1m41.713s	1.946s	21
19	Jorge Lorenzo	Ducati	Ducati	1m41.782s	2.015s	15
20	Takaaki Nakagami	LCR Honda	Honda	1m42.471s	2.704s	22
21	Alvaro Bautista	Aspar Ducati	Ducati	1m42.617s	2.850s	11
22	Scott Redding	Aprilia	Aprilia	1m42.893s	3.126s	16
23	Thomas Luthi	MVDS Honda	Honda	1m43.000s	3.233s	21
24	Hafizh Syahrin	Tech3 Yamaha	Yamaha	1m43.804s	4.037s	20
25	Jordi Torres	Avintia Ducati	Ducati	1m45.001s	5.234s	16