The increasing likelihood that Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal will be sacked less than a week after guiding his club to FA Cup triumph just further begs the question, “Who would want to be an EPL manager?”

22 riders were on hand for the opening day of the second pre-2017 season test taking place at the Phillip Island circuit in Australia. The test started today, the fifteenth of February, and will run for the next three days.

Setting the early pace was new Yamaha rider, maverick Vinales, who was sitting at the top of the timesheets at the end of the morning session, the young Spaniard setting a best overall time of 1:29.990.

But not long after they returned to the track after lunch and Marc Marquez put his Honda at the top of the leaderboard, by a tenth of a second over Vinales.

The beautiful weather conditions continued for the rest of the afternoon and the riders managed to get in a significant amount of dry weather running after a washed out Sepang test last time out.

As the daylight began to fade on day one, Marquez extended his time at the front and was almost a half a second faster than Vinales but then teammate, Valentino Rossi, took P2, less than tewo tenths behind Marques. The Ducati of Andrea Iannone also flew past Vinales and took P3, pushing the young Spaniard back to fourth place overall with Cal Crutchlow rounding out the top five.

1 M. MARQUEZ 1:29.497
2 V. ROSSI +0.187
3 A. IANNONE +0.429
4 M. VIÑALES +0.492
5 C. CRUTCHLOW +0.568
6 D. PETRUCCI +0.765
7 D. PEDROSA +0.784
8 A. DOVIZIOSO +0.913
9 J. MILLER +0.929
10 J. FOLGER +1.081
11 J. LORENZO +1.134
12 A. BAUTISTA +1.273
13 H. BARBERA +1.274
14 A. ESPARGARO +1.305
15 J. ZARCO +1.370
16 K. ABRAHAM +1.682
17 P. ESPARGARO +1.703
18 L. BAZ +1.752
19 A. RINS +1.935
20 S. REDDING +2.258
21 S. LOWES +2.810
22 B. SMITH +3.193