Nakagami and Bulega fastest on Day 1 in Jerez

Japanese and Italian riders top their respective Moto2™ and Moto3™ timesheets

Takaaki Nakagami (Idemitsu Honda Team Asia) continued his good run of preseason form on Day 1 of private testing at the Circuito de Jerez, going fastest in Moto2™ with a good number of his expected key rivals in 2017 also present – including CarXpert Interwetten, Forward Racing and Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS.

Day 1 saw good weather allow a lot of running, with Nakagami’s best lap a 1:42.210 after 70 laps. Close behind was Lorenzo Baldassarri for Forward Racing on a 1:42.292, just ahead of his teammate Luca Marini. Morbidelli was P4 with a 1:42.802, ahead of 2015 Moto3™ Champion Danny Kent in fifth as he switches to Suter machinery at Kiefer Racing.

Tom Lüthi was P6 for CarXpert Interwetten, just ahead of compatriot Dominique Aegerter on the second Kiefer Racing Suter. Jorge Navarro (Federal Oil Gresini Moto2) was P9, with many riders present not using transponders to show up on the official timesheets.

Nicolo Bulega (Sky Racing Team VR46) was the quickest in Moto3™ with a 1:46.912 – ahead of Philipp Oettl (Südmetall Schedl GP Racing) and Jorge Martin (Del Conca Racing Team Gresini).

There were five crashes on Day 1, with Lüthi, Marini, Sandro Cortese (Dynavolt Intact GP), Alex Marquez (Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS) and Yonny Hernandez (AGR Team) all suffering incidents with no consequence.

Another day of testing continues on Thursday.