Marc Marquez remained dominant at the Circuit of the Americas as he quickly got to the top of the leaderboard in FP3 and remained as the only person to beat his own time, as riders struggled to get within half a second of his time.
The rain flag has been waved the session before when the Moto3 class were on the track however it was not heavy. Marquez wore had a medium compound rear Michelin tyre instead of the soft compound he ran on his Repsol Honda the day before when he remained in charge. It was not long before he broke through the 2:03 barrier however he was still almost 1.7 seconds off the lap record of 2:02.135 set by him in 2015.
Ducati rider Andrea Iannone decided to run with the two pairs of wings on the front of his Desmosedici GP bike. After just over twenty minutes he fell off at turn eleven; the Marshals helped him up and cleaned his tyre so he could return to the track; when he got back to the pits the screens went up.
The riders were allocated another tyre today by Michelin who brought a medium compound rear for FP3 and qualifying. Nicolas Goubert spoke the day before saying that Michelin decided to rebuild the tyres from scratch back in France and that riders would have enough allocated for each session, however, the different compounds would arrive on different days.
It was only Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS rider Jack Miller who was missing from the field in the closing stages; Miller had a big cash the day before and doctors were confirming whether he was OK to participate or not.
Marquez’s final lap of 2:03.741 secured him first position at the end of FP1, Iannone was 0.196 seconds slower as the only other rider who was able to lap below 2:04 minutes. Movistar Yamaha rider Jorge Lorenzo was in third ahead of Vinales who ran a personal best lap at the end of the session to secure him fourth.
LCR Honda rider Cal Crutchlow also secured a fast time when it counted at the end of the session finishing ahead of Lorenzo’s teammate Valentino Rossi whose personal best time late on gained him sixth ahead of Dani Pedrosa who did not look happy.
Avintia Ducati rider Loris Baz finished in eighth ahead of Ducati rider Andrea Dovizioso and Scott Redding took the final place on the list of the top ten riders,
