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General

Germany MotoGP qualifying

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Crash
Rossi has crashed at Turn 1, on what would've been his final lap!
Espargaro, Bradl and Iannone all improve with a minute left on the clock, but Dovizioso is still hanging on to the second Q2 spot.
Stopwatch
Rossi responds with a mega lap, a 1m20.933s, which leaves him almost half a second clear of the Q2 cut-off. It's hard to see how he doesn't make the pole decider at this point.
Crash
Rabat has crashed at Turn 1, so much for that hard rear tyre.
Stopwatch
Four minutes to go, and that's a lot more like it from the previously-irritated Dovizioso! He goes top with a 1m21.105s.
Rossi has now gone out on the soft rear - but Espargaro and Rabat are rolling the dice with the hard.
Dovizioso comes in and heads back out immediately. He is incensed about either nearly hitting one of his mechanics or being nearly collected by an unsafe release for Abraham - either way, he is not having a great time.
Information
Current order: 1 Rossi, 2 A Espargaro, 3 Bradl, 4 Nakagami, 5 Iannone, 6 Dovizioso, 7 Oliveira, 8 Bagnaia, 9 Rabat, 10 Syahrin, 11 Zarco, 12 Abraham.
Stopwatch
But Rossi is - he improves once more to a 1m21.236s. Mind you, that's still slower than what he was in FP3.
Dovizioso runs wide at Turn 8 and is forced to abandon the lap. He's not looking in great shape for Q2.
Dovizioso can only move up to fifth place, but is on another fast lap - as is Rossi once again.
Stopwatch
Espargaro and Bradl now take over in the first two spots, but Rossi edges back ahead, posting a 1m21.341s. But that's the top three split by just half a tenth!
Oliveira is now up to second, 0.016s slower than Rossi. Doviziozo's first lap is only good enough for tenth, but he's on a much better one now.
Stopwatch
Rossi is alone in having gone out on the hard rear tyre - with everyone else on softs. The Italian takes the top spot with a 1m21.595s, two tenths up on Aleix Espargaro.
The initial benchmark is a 1m22.662s from Tito Rabat. Oliveira and Syahrin go quicker right away.
Rossi leaves it late to head out for his opening round, finding himself in clean air, with only Nakagami half a sector behind.
Green flag
Q1 has kicked off at the Sachsenring.
But now on to Q1, where Rossi, Espargaro and Nakagami have to be the three favourites to advance. Normally you'd count Dovizioso in that list as well, but Ducati's leading man has been looking fairly limp this Saturday.
Despite Vinales' FP4-topping form, Marquez looks very clearly the man to beat here, at least in terms of race pace, as he ran the same tyres all session and counted off one 1m21s lap after another.
Information
Q1 roster: Rossi, A Espargaro, Nakagami, Dovizioso, Oliveira, Iannone, Zarco, Bradl, Rabat, Abraham, Syahrin, Bagnaia.
Checkered flag
Chequered flag in FP4, Vinales will top the session from Marquez. The two Suzukis of Alex Rins and Joan Mir and the KTM of Pol Espargaro make it a Spanish 1-2-3-4-5.

The highest-placed Ducati is Avintia rider Tito Rabat, in 11th place.
Massive alarm bells will be ringing for Ducati now - there isn't a single Desmosedici bike in the top 10 in FP4. Pramac's Francesco Bagnaia leads the way in 11th, while its two guaranteed Q2 participants - Jack Miller and Danilo Pertucci - are 17th and 19th.
Maverick Vinales has now edged ahead of Marquez in FP4, by 0.078s, but the championship leader has another couple of minutes to respond.
Only Petronas Yamaha rookie Fabio Quartararo has beaten Marquez in a session this weekend so far, topping FP1 - and the Frenchman has since suffered a setback by partially dislocating his left shoulder when his bike shook violently in FP3.
Information
Marc Marquez has taken every MotoGP pole position and victory up for grabs at the Sachsenring since joining the premier class in 2013.

He currently leads the race-simulation FP4 session by a rather worrying 0.470s.
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the Sachsenring MotoGP weekend, with qualifying for the German Grand Prix set to kick off in just under 20 minutes.

By: Jake Boxall-Legge

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