Heavy rain on Thursday evening left some damp patches on track for the start of Friday’s running at the sixth round of the 2022 campaign at Jerez, but the entire field headed out on slicks to get some laps under their belts.
Reigning world champion Quartararo, who is twice a winner at Jerez in MotoGP, set the early pace with a 1m41.849s, which he improved eventually to a 1m39.226s 10 minutes in.
Honda’s Marc Marquez – who said on Thursday at Jerez that HRC had “ideas” on how to fix the problems it faced last time out in Portugal – briefly went to the top of the order with a 1m39.028s.
But Quartararo returned to top spot a few seconds later with a 1m38.780s.
However, with just under 15 minutes of the 45-minute session gone, Quartararo’s session started to unravel when he crashed exiting Turn 13 – having seemingly touched a damp patch – and hurt his groin.
Needing some time before returning to his Yamaha box, Quartararo did get back out on track on his second M1.
But he would have another big moment with just under four minutes remaining coming into the Turn 9 right-hander while on a lap that was set to put him back to the top of the timesheets.
Then on the following lap the Yamaha rider ran off track up at the Turn 5 right-hander leading onto the back straight.
Fabio Quartararo, Yamaha Factory Racing
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Quartararo would end the session in fifth, but just 0.245s off the pace as 19 riders were within a second of top spot at the end of FP1.
While Quartararo was having a scrappy end to his session, 2020 world champion Mir had gone top of the pile with a 1m38.422s.
LCR Honda’s Alex Marquez had briefly gone top at the end of FP1 with a 1m38.368s, but Mir produced an excellent 1m38.194s to end the morning fastest of all.
Team-mate Alex Rins moved up to second with his final lap, shadowing Mir by just 0.025s, with Alex Marquez shuffled back to third ahead of Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaro and Quartararo.
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