Aleix Espargaro on top in Qatar

Over the last few months, during the preparations for the new MotoGP world championship campaign, the elder Espargaro sibling has been the standout performer of the testing period – showing the potential of his ‘Open’ entry Yamaha for the NGM Mobile Forward Racing team.

ALL THE QATAR TIMES

He set the best time of the three-day Qatar test with a 1:54.874. That time was less than 0.2 seconds off Jorge Lorenzo’s 2013 pole lap at the Losail circuit -- and Espargaro also looked strong in a race simulation which he carried out late on the final day.

His brother Pol Espargaro, the Moto2 world champion and a rookie this season, was just 0.033 seconds behind him in second place, but the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 youngster’s solid pre-season ended with an untimely collarbone fracture. He has now had surgery in Barcelona.

On the other side of the Tech 3 garage, Englishman Bradley Smith has a year of MotoGP racing under his belt and having finished third at the test (+0.153 seconds) one of his objectives will be to beat the Espargaro brothers in the opening Grands Prix of 2014. Smith escaped unhurt from a mid-evening spill from his Yamaha YZR-M1.

After the three Yamahas at the top of the timesheet, Honda riders Stefan Bradl and Alvaro Bautista were fourth and fifth respectively with similar lap times, the pair of them avoiding injury despite both crashing twice on Sunday. LCR Honda man Bradl notched a 1:55.187, putting him 0.045 seconds ahead of his GO&FUN Honda Gresini rival.

Australia’s Broc Parkes was 15th out of 17 riders on his Paul Bird Motorsport machine, one spot ahead of teammate Michael Laverty.

There is a Moto2 and Moto3 test this week at Jerez, ahead of round one back in Qatar from March 20-23.