Valentino Rossi may be playing down his chances in staying in front of Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa in this weekend’s Misano GP, but the first practice session put the Italian rider on the top of the chart with a hot lap of 1.35.304, leaving Lorenzo in second just 0.126s behind.

Lorenzo and Pedrosa exchanged the top position several times putting Rossi and the others well behind with Lorenzo putting in a series of laps almost a half a second faster than the rest of the field.

Dani Pedrosa was third, 0.776s from Rossi and in the final minute of the session his Honda RC212V suffered from some sort of engine problem leaving the Spaniard parking his bike against the barriers and hitching a ride back to his garage. Pedrosa’s engine failure may have left him with one less engine to use for the rest of the season.

Alex DeAngelis, is continuing to show good form and led the the begining of the session until a lowside put him off, but the rider from San Marino was able to come back later and take fourth, just 0.016sec slower than Pedrosa.

The best of the rest started with Andrea Doviziozo on the second factory Honda who was 1.012 seconds from Rossi.

Colin Edwards, Mika Kallio, Loris Capirossi, James Toseland and Nicky Hayden, 6th to 10 place respectively, were all in less than 0.3sec between each other.

Aleix Espargaro on his second outing with Pramc Ducati after his MotoGP debut at Indy was 13th, putting behind him Chris Vermeulen, Niccolò Canepa, Marco Melandri and Gabor Talmacsi.

MotoGP Misano FP1 Results:

1 Valentino ROSSI 1.35.304
2 Jorge LORENZO 1.35.430
3 Dani PEDROSA 1.36.080
4 Alex DE ANGELIS 1.36.096
5 Andrea DOVIZIOSO 1.36.316
6 Colin EDWARDS 1.36.350
7 Mika KALLIO 1.36.419
8 Loris CAPIROSSI 1.36.508
9 James TOSELAND 1.36.588
10 Nicky HAYDEN 1.36.608
11 Randy DE PUNIET 1.37.056
12 Toni ELIAS HONDA 1.37.057
13 Aleix ESPARGARO 1.37.126
14 Chris VERMEULEN 1.37.134
15 Niccolo CANEPA 1.37.306
16 Marco MELANDRI 1.37.454
17 Gabor TALMACSI 1.37.869

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