2017 Brno MotoGP FP4 Result: Marquez Turns Up The Heat

While the substantial crowd was getting a tan in a cloudless 28 degrees, the MotoGP grid turned its attention to the harder tyre option to deal with the 46 degrees on the track. Fairly familiar with the tyre after giving it several tries during the weekend, Marc Marquez blasted straight into the lead to post a strong set of mid 1:56s. The world championship leader remained unchallenged to the flag and will be hoping for the rainy Sunday forecast to turn into a heatwave.

Jonas Folger did a small repeat of Sachsenring by trailing Marquez by nine thousandths of a second for the entire length of the session, the Tech 3 rider finishing second and top Yamaha.

After a brilliant FP3, the factory Yamahas looked like going backwards as the temperatures went up, both initially out of the top ten before Maverick Viñales twitched his way into seventh position on the new chassis and hard tyres. After switching from a hard-hard combination to a medium set, Valentino Rossi found some speed to go a few better and jump into third.

Jorge Lorenzo’s new fairing was resplendent in the sunshine and shone in fourth position, less than two tenths down on the leader. Dani Pedrosa was another position down, three tenths behind his teammate.

Cal Crutchlow had doctors knocking on his garage door after this morning’s crash shook him up but the Brit rushed back on track to grab sixth spot. With Viñales in seventh position, Andrea Dovizioso took eighth, trailing his teammate by three tenths of a second.

The top ten was completed by two welcome surprises, Pol Espargaro and Alex Rins adding a KTM and a Suzuki to the top ten mix.

Danilo Petrucci hoped to be back to more familiar positions after ditching the new aero fairing on the grounds that it needed more setup adjustments but could not do better than twelfth, ahead of Johann Zarco, whose off track excursion affected his position.

Results: