The elder of the Espargaro brothers had just knocked Jorge Lorenzo off the top of the times when he suffered a big off at Sachsenring's Turn 4 left-hander seven minutes into the session.

He hit the air-fence with speed, and while able to walk away, the Aprilia rider looked to be in pain as he was taken to the medical centre, having reportedly suffered a blow to his ribs.

After a brief delay to repair the barrier, poleman Marc Marquez bettered Espargaro's time to go quickest with a 1m21.397s, with Pol soon moving up to second, a tenth behind.

The KTM man then lowered the bar to a 1m21.230s to end the 20-minute session fastest, 0.167s ahead of Honda man Marquez.

Andrea Dovizioso left it late to move up to third on the best of the Ducatis, demoting the satellite Nieto machine of Alvaro Bautista down to fourth.

Aleix Espargaro's best time was good enough for fifth despite his crash, ahead of Andrea Iannone on the lead Suzuki and Lorenzo.

Yamaha pair Valentino Rossi and Maverick Vinales and the leading LCR Honda of Takaaki Nakagami completed the top 10, the latter just edging out the second works bike of Dani Pedrosa.

Nakagami's teammate Cal Crutchlow could do more than 16th, a little under a second off the pace.

Warm-up results:

Pos.	#	Rider	Bike	Time	Gap
1	44	Pol Espargaro	KTM	1'21.230
2	93	Marc Marquez	Honda	1'21.397	0.167
3	4	Andrea Dovizioso	Ducati	1'21.463	0.233
4	19	Alvaro Bautista	Ducati	1'21.529	0.299
5	41	Aleix Espargaro	Aprilia	1'21.546	0.316
6	29	Andrea Iannone	Suzuki	1'21.563	0.333
7	99	Jorge Lorenzo	Ducati	1'21.567	0.337
8	46	Valentino Rossi	Yamaha	1'21.577	0.347
9	25	Maverick Viñales	Yamaha	1'21.614	0.384
10	30	Takaaki Nakagami	Honda	1'21.847	0.617
11	26	Dani Pedrosa	Honda	1'21.868	0.638
12	42	Alex Rins	Suzuki	1'21.878	0.648
13	38	Bradley Smith	KTM	1'21.920	0.690
14	45	Scott Redding	Aprilia	1'21.999	0.769
15	55	Hafizh Syahrin	Yamaha	1'22.100	0.870
16	35	Cal Crutchlow	Honda	1'22.158	0.928
17	43	Jack Miller	Ducati	1'22.190	0.960
18	5	Johann Zarco	Yamaha	1'22.192	0.962
19	12	Thomas Luthi	Honda	1'22.404	1.174
20	53	Tito Rabat	Ducati	1'22.425	1.195
21	6	Stefan Bradl	Honda	1'22.430	1.200
22	9	Danilo Petrucci	Ducati	1'22.526	1.296
23	17	Karel Abraham	Ducati	1'22.575	1.345
24	10	Xavier Simeon	Ducati	1'23.151	1.921