Espargaró strong from the off in FP1

Pol Espargaró and Nico Terol reignited their Championship battle in the opening 125cc practice session of the Gran Premio d’Italia TIM on Friday afternoon, as the former set the fastest lap of the session with his last turn of the Mugello circuit to take the early momentum.

Bancaja Aspar rider Terol, who leads the Championship standings by two points from Espargaró leading into the weekend, looked to have done enough to take the first practice honours, but his Tuenti Racing adversary posted a time of 1’58.373 right at the end to edge himself 0.058s in front.

Third fastest was last year’s race winner Bradley Smith, who found an immediate pace on his Aprilia of the Bancaja Aspar team, something which has not been the case regularly this season so far. At 0.650s off Espargaró’s time there is still work to do for the Brit, who was just under two-tenths ahead of Efrén Vázquez (Tuenti Racing).

Completing the top five was Randy Krummenacher (Stipa-Molenaar Racing) who matched Vázquez’s time, and Marc Márquez (Red Bull Ajo Motorsport) was the sixth and final rider to get within a second of Espargaró’s marker.

Esteve Rabat (Blusens-STX), Sandro Cortese (Avant Mitsubishi Ajo), Tomoyoshi Koyama (Racing Team Germany) and Jonas Folger (Team Ongetta) all recorded top ten times to get their weekends off to good starts too.

The only faller of the session was Riccardo Moretti, who secured a wildcard ride shortly before the start of his home GP weekend with the Junior GP FMI team. He went down with 15 minutes of the session remaining and appeared to be uninjured as he walked off the track.