Eugene Laverty needs MotoGP medical clearance to return to action

Laverty crashed heavily at the fast Turn 6 amid a frenetic end to the second session, which Valentino Rossi attributed to a drop in temperatures, and while conscious he had to be stretchered away from the scene.

The 30-year-old was walking again by the time he reached the medical centre, where he received the initial all-clear before being flown to Dokkyo Medical University Hospital for a CAT scan on his head.

Cleared of serious injury, whether Laverty continues in the weekend will be decided by doctors at Motegi on Saturday morning.

"I started the session with the hard rear tyre, I was doing really good lap times with good rhythm and was up in 13th position," Laverty said.

"At the end we tried the soft rear tyre and I noticed it was taking more time to warm up so I tried to be careful.

"But on the first lap I crashed at the fast Turn 6 when the rear tyre spun up.

"I was quite lucky in some ways because it was a huge crash.

"Thankfully the scan results were all clear and I will look to ride tomorrow.

"I'd like to thank the staff from the circuit at Motegi, the MotoGP doctors and the clinica mobile staff for taking care of me."

The weekend is Laverty's fourth-last in MotoGP before he returns to the World Superbike Championship with Aprilia in 2017.

He finished the session in 13th place, 1.702 seconds off the pace set by Yamaha's Jorge Lorenzo, and two places ahead of team-mate Yonny Hernandez.

Uncertainty is growing around Hernandez's place on the 2017 grid, with increasing talk that Karel Abraham will return to MotoGP to partner Aspar's new recruit Alvaro Bautista.

Abraham raced in the series between 2011 and '15 and this year moved to World Superbikes, while he has also been part of KTM's MotoGP testing line-up.