Sachsenring MotoGP: Marc Marquez heads Valentino Rossi in practice

Two weeks after their spectacular battle and controversial spat at Assen, Marquez and Rossi were again the main protagonists in practice one for the last race before the summer break.

Having swapped places a few times early on, Honda rider Marquez overcame the small advantage Rossi's Yamaha held following the opening runs.

The only man who lapped in 1m21s, Marquez stretched his margin to 0.336 seconds with with a time of 1m21.766s on his penultimate flying lap.

Jorge Lorenzo had been close behind the lead pair on the second Yamaha until a gaggle of other riders made last-minute improvements and pushed him back.

Scott Redding was foremost among them, putting the Marc VDS Honda third in his strongest performance of 2015 so far.

The Briton was ahead of the second factory Honda of Dani Pedrosa and the Ducatis of Pramac's Yonny Hernandez and wroks man Andrea Dovizioso.

Lorenzo ended up down in seventh.

Suzuki, running a special livery to mark 30 years of the GSX-R, took eighth and 11th with Aleix Espargaro and Maverick Vinales, sandwiching Cal Crutchlow's LCR Honda and Andrea Iannone's Ducati.

Pol Espargaro and Alvaro Bautista both had heavy crashes at the fast downhill Turn 11. Neither was hurt.

Bautista's new Aprilia team-mate Michael Laverty made an encouraging start by lapping within six tenths of the Spaniard and taking 23rd, closer to the pace than his predecessor Marco Melandri had generally been.

The grid is back up to 25 bikes this weekend, with Honda test rider Hiroshi Aoyama - who was 20th quickest - standing in for Karel Abraham at Cardion.

The team had missed Assen following Abraham's Barcelona toe injury and the collapse of a planned stand-in deal with World Superbike rider Michael van der Mark.

The field's other returnee, Claudio Corti, brought up the rear on the Forward Yamaha usually raced by the injured Stefan Bradl.

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