What happened in first Assen MotoGP practice
Aprilia's bid to regain momentum in the MotoGP title fight started promisingly at Assen, though Ducati's Pecco Bagnaia denied it a 1-2 right at the end of first practice.
Ducati's clean sweeps of the Balaton and Brno weekends have put Aprilia under pressure in a season it seemed to be dominating.
Though Marc Marquez is still only fourth in the riders' championship, he has closed from 102 points behind standings leader Marco Bezzecchi to just 40 over those two weekends - helped massively by Bezzecchi being taken out by team-mate Jorge Martin at the Hungarian Grand Prix start and then being banned from the Czech GP for slapping a marshal.
Bezzecchi and Martin moved into first and second in the second half of Friday morning practice in the Netherlands, in a strong start to the weekend given Aprilia often doesn't show its full hand in the opening session.
But Bagnaia snuck his Ducati between them with his last lap, 0.098 seconds slower than Bezzecchi and 0.046s ahead of Martin.
Marquez was only 10th, having crashed going into the final chicane and lost some running in the final part of the session before rejoining for some low-key late laps.
LCR Honda's Diogo Moreira had the other crash of note, with a low-key fall going into the long Turn 2 right-hander.
In another encouraging sign for Aprilia, Trackhouse duo Ai Ogura and Raul Fernandez completed the top six behind Fabio Di Giannantonio's VR46 Ducati.
Results
- Marco Bezzecchi (Aprilia)
- Pecco Bagnaia (Ducati) +0.098s
- Jorge Martin (Aprilia) +0.144s
- Fabio Di Giannantonio (VR46 Ducati) +0.160s
- Ai Ogura (Trackhouse Aprilia) +0.164s
- Raul Fernandez (Trackhouse Aprilia) +0.205s
- Joan Mir (Honda) +0.240s
- Fermin Aldeguer (Gresini Ducati) +0.347s
- Maverick Vinales (Tech3 KTM) +0.356s
- Marc Marquez (Ducati) +0.446s
- Pedro Acosta (KTM) +0.454s
- Diogo Moreira (LCR Honda) +0.539s
- Alex Marquez (Ducati) +0.639s
- Franco Morbidelli (VR46 Ducati) +0.670s
- Enea Bastianini (Tech3 KTM) +0.765s
- Jack Miller (Pramac Yamaha) +0.790s
- Alex Rins (Yamaha) +0.823s
- Luca Marini (Honda) +0.956s
- Brad Binder (KTM) +0.957s
- Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha) +0.985s
- Toprak Razgatlioglu (Pramac Yamaha) +1.204s
- Augusto Fernandez (Yamaha) +1.688s
- Cal Crutchlow (LCR Honda) +2.350s
