MotoGP championship leader Fabio Quartararo endured a mixed opening day at the British Grand Prix, comfortably topping practice despite crashing heavily.

The Frenchman clocked a pace-setting 1:59.317s to gap the field by more than half a second, with Australia’s Jack Miller his nearest rival.

But as much as anything, it was a crash in FP2 which left Quartararo in visible pain that caught attention.

“Everything is okay. My left foot is a little bit sore, but it’s nothing too serious,” he reported.

“I’ve been to the medical centre and went back on the bike, and it was okay.

“On the bike it’s not an issue, just when I’m walking I have quite a lot of pain. But, honestly, the most important thing is that on the bike I have no pain.

“I knew I was going to be fast with the soft tyre. I wasn’t pushing to the limit on the medium tyre. I was doing my own pace, and I was quite impressed by my lap times.

“In that moment I knew that with the softs I could be much faster. I knew I was going to be fighting for the top three positions, but I never expected to be first by half a second.

“I need to go back to the Clinica Mobile later. I kind of twisted my ankle, so they will put some ice on it and tape it to strengthen it. It should be fine tomorrow.”

Quartararo wasn’t alone in crashing, with Marc Marquez, Jorge Martin and Alex Marquez (twice) also finding trouble.

MotoGP qualifying takes place tonight from 23:10 (AEST), following another two practice sessions starting 18:55 and 22:30.

Meanwhile, in Moto2, points leader Remy Gardner was fifth fastest in practice, 0.414s adrift of Red Bull KTM Ajo team-mate Raul Fernandez.

Friday practice: British MotoGP Combined times