De Angelis begins Australian weekend on the pace

Alex de Angelis was the Moto2 pace man in the first practice of the Iveco Australian Grand Prix on Friday, setting the best lap of the hour-long session with an effort of 1’36.295 on his Motobi machine of the JiR Moto2 team.

That placed De Angelis just 18-thousandths of a second ahead of 17 year-old British talent Scott Redding, who was second fastest in the session on his Suter machine. The Marc VDS Racing Team rider, who has been in fine form of late, was just under four-tenths quicker than Fonsi Nieto (G22 Holiday Gym).

Julián Simón (Mapfre Aspar) and Andrea Iannone (Fimmco Speed Up), who are still closely contesting second spot in the Championship, were separated by 0.252s in fourth and fifth respectively, with Jules Cluzel (Forward Racing), Mike di Meglio (Mapfre Aspar) and Roberto Rolfo (Italtrans STR) completing the top eight.

Sergio Gadea (Tenerife 40 Pons) experienced a difficult session, crashing twice, whilst Yonny Hernández (Blusens-STX) and Simone Corsi (JiR Moto2) also had falls, the latter of whom high sided at turn 11.