John McGuiness
Martin Jessopp
The first afternoon of this year’s Grand Prix saw the inaugural battle for the lead of the 49th edition of the Macau Motorcycle Grand Prix. With temperatures rising and rubber squealing on the track, the times started to drop as the pack’s two most experienced riders raced to top the day’s leaderboard.
Michael Rutter and John McGuinness were in a lively contest, trading places at the top, the likes of which we have not seen them do for a long time on the streets of Macau.
Martin Jessopp, another serious candidate for the final win, finished in the top three at 0.465 sec off McGuiness. Jessopp dominated the morning free practice session and was inclusively the fastest in each of the three time sectors, but never managed to put together a full lap with that pace.
Michael Rutter
Ian Hutchinson was the fourth fastest on track yesterday and the only rider on the second 28 to clock 2:28.776, over a second slower than Jessop.
Gary Johnson, Horst Saiger, Peter Wickman, Lee Johnston, Conor Cummins and Jimmy Storrar closed the Top 10 with the first 5 riding on the same second (2:29) with Storrar falling behind the group by roughly 1.4 sec.
This qualifier was split in two after the session was stopped, due to Russell Mountford’s crash in the narrowest and windiest section of the circuit. Although an official report on his condition was unavailable at press time, the Times learned that Mountford was seriously but non-fatally injured, and sustained several fractures.
A surprising disappointment is last year’s winner Stuart Easton, who has always presented fantastic rides in all his visits to the territory. Easton seems to be far from last year’s results as he is still recovering from an injury, but also seemed to lack confidence in his first outing on his Yamaha.
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