Danilo Petrucci topped a fragmented opening practice session for the Dutch TT weekend at Assen, though suffered a late mechanical issue with his Ducati GP17.
The session was stopped just a few minutes in when Andrea Dovizioso’s Ducati leaked oil at Turns 9, 10 and 11, leading to crashes for team-mate Jorge Lorenzo and for Tech3 Yamaha’s Jonas Folger, who was taken to the medical centre.
After a delay of almost 30 minutes, the session got back underway with a flurry of activity. Yamaha’s Maverick Vinales was the early pacesetter, the Spaniard spending his time continuing the evaluation of a new chassis first tried at the post-race Barcelona test.
Vinales opted against fitting fresh rubber for a time attack towards the end of the session and slipped to 12th on the timesheets with his early gambit of 1m35.263s.
Top spot changed hands rapidly over the final 10 minutes, but it was Pramac Racing’s Petrucci who edged the rest by just 0.126 seconds with a 1m34.680s.
The Italian was forced to park up at Turn 2 on his final lap just as the chequered flag dropped with a mechanical issue, the second of the day for Ducati after Dovizioso’s red-flag prompting problem.
Tech3’s Johann Zarco had sat top of the pile briefly, but ends the morning second ahead of LCR Honda’s Cal Crutchlow, who secured his MotoGP future this week with a two-year factory HRC deal.
Dovizioso ended the first session fourth fastest despite his early woes, with Valentino Rossi also carrying out some data gathering on the new Yamaha chassis in fifth spot.
Suzuki’s Andrea Iannone comes into the eight round of the season surrounded by speculation as to his 2018 plans, but put all of that to one side to post an confidence-boosting 1m34.914s to go sixth quickest ahead of Dani Pedrosa.
Folger suffered no real ill-effects from his crash at the start of the session and was eighth, with Jorge Lorenzo and Karel Abraham locking out a top 10 covered by just 0.503s.
2016 Assen race winner Jack Miller was stuck in his Marc VDS garage for while in the opening part of the session with brake issues, but was able to get out on track for 17 laps and was just 0.010s outside of the top 10 in 11th.
Behind 12th-placed Vinales was Marquez, while Scott Redding and Alvaro Bautista rounded out the top 15. The returning Alex Rins, making his first appearance since fracturing his wrist in a crash in Austin third practice, ended the morning 18th and just 1.197s from top spot. 
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