Petrucci 'seeing stars' after oil spill fall

Danilo Petrucci's MotoGP return came to an early end when he suffered a high-speed accident caused by an oil spill during Wednesday's Official test at Jerez.

Fluid from Aleix Espargaro's Aprilia sent both Petrucci and rookie Alex Marquez to the ground.

Marquez escaped unharmed from his Turn 6 crash, while Petrucci headed to the medical centre with a sore neck after tumbling at the fast turn 11 right-hander.

Although described as being 'okay', the Ducati rider did not take any further part in the testing action and is now hoping he won’t have any physical problems ahead of this weekend's season-opening grand prix.

"Unfortunately I had a very, very big crash," Petrucci said. "In front of me there was Aleix and when he was braking the bike was losing some smoke.

"I thought immediately it was oil but after half-a-lap he was still riding good so I thought 'it's not oil' but when I arrived at Turn 11 I lost the front.

"It's a very fast corner, long right in third gear, 150km/h, and I started to tumble. I hit my head and was seeing stars, so we decided to quit the session and unfortunately it was the most important session because it's at the time of the race.

"But I must say I've been lucky, only some pain in the neck. I just hope the neck won't hurt tomorrow because it's a special area for riding the bike."

Petrucci, who only completed four laps of the afternoon session, was 20th fastest (+1.3s) in the morning.

Team-mate Andrea Dovizioso, recovering from last month's collarbone injury on a motocross bike, moved from 19th to 12th in the afternoon.