Vinales fastest again as Valencia testing concludes

While most of the session was led by Marc Marquez, Vinales took over at the top for the final two hours before conditions became too cold for any further improvements.

Similarly to yesterday, Jorge Lorenzo was first to enter the track, but Marquez soon went faster, beating Vinales' Tuesday time with his first effort.

He completed his stint with a 1m30.629s, a lap that remained on top of the timesheets for a while, mainly because of the red flags that soon neutralised the action.

Minutes after a crash from Suzuki rookie Alex Rins at Turn 12, his teammate Andrea Iannone also fell at the exact same corner and damaged the barrier, which needed fixing.

Rins was carried away on a stretcher to the trackside medical centre for precautionary checks and was diagnosed with two compressed vertebrae.

The session was restarted with five hours remaining, with Marquez staying ahead even though the Spaniard's progress was temporarily delayed by a fall.

Fellow Honda riders Jack Miller and Dani Pedrosa both closed the gap to the reigning champion, but it was Andrea Dovizioso on the Ducati that eventually took first.

Vinales, who spent the day riding the 2016-spec Yamaha, took over at the top of the times with two hours remaining, becoming the first rider to go under the 1m30s barrier and lead by half a second.

Marquez improved on his personal best time twice soon afterwards and lowered the difference to Vinales to two tenths, but he had to settle for second.

Dovizioso was nearly half a second off the pace with the Ducati Desmosedici GP17 in third, with Iannone bringing a fourth different bike into the top four aboard the Suzuki.

Honda duo Pedrosa and Cal Crutchlow took fifth and sixth respectively, the Briton setting an identical fastest time to Valentino Rossi, who was more than seven tenths slower than his new teammate Vinales.

Jorge Lorenzo, who switched from the GP16 to GP17 today, was eighth ahead of Aleix Espargaro, the Aprilia rider completing a promising day in which he at one point had been as high as third.

Tech 3 Yamaha's rookie duo Jonas Folger and Johann Zarco ended up 10th and 11th respectively, separated by less than a tenth.

Alongside the Suzuki duo and Marquez, Jack Miller lost control of his bike at Turn 1 while Alvaro Bautista, Bradley Smith and Scott Redding both had offs.

Smith completed the day in 20th, while his KTM teammate Pol Espargaro was 17th.

Aprilia's Sam Lowes, meanwhile, decided to sit out the day as his neck was not fully fit following his crash at the end of Tuesday's running.

Day 2 results

Pos.	#	Rider	Bike	Time	Gap	Laps
1	25	Maverick Vinales	Yamaha	1:29.975		66
2	93	Marc Marquez	Honda	1:30.171	0.196	58
3	4	Andrea Dovizioso	Ducati	1:30.443	0.468	33
4	29	Andrea Iannone	Suzuki	1:30.599	0.624	47
5	26	Dani Pedrosa	Honda	1:30.686	0.711	38
6	35	Cal Crutchlow	Honda	1:30.709	0.734	45
7	46	Valentino Rossi	Yamaha	1:30.709	0.734	45
8	99	Jorge Lorenzo	Ducati	1:30.744	0.769	41
9	41	Aleix Espargaro	Aprilia	1:30.885	0.910	45
10	94	Jonas Folger	Yamaha	1:30.948	0.973	62
11	5	Johann Zarco	Yamaha	1:31.015	1.040	55
12	43	Jack Miller	Honda	1:31.069	1.094	40
13	45	Scott Redding	Ducati	1:31.118	1.143	42
14	19	Alvaro Bautista	Ducati	1:31.186	1.211	69
15	8	Hector Barbera	Ducati	1:31.244	1.269	39
16	51	Michele Pirro	Ducati	1:31.816	1.841	37
17	44	Pol Espargaro	KTM	1:31.853	1.878	33
18	53	Tito Rabat	Honda	1:31.918	1.943	36
19	76	Loris Baz	Ducati	1:32.161	2.186	36
20	38	Bradley Smith	KTM	1:32.538	2.563	34
21	50	Eugene Laverty	Aprilia	1:32.568	2.593	38
22	17	Karel Abraham	Ducati	1:32.699	2.724	31
23	12	Takuya Tsuda	Suzuki	1:33.305	3.330	68
24	42	Alex Rins	Suzuki	1:33.761	3.786	4