Leopard Racing KTM’s Andrea Locatelli ended a chilly morning at the Ricardo Tormo Circuit in Valencia fastest in an incredibly tight session that saw the top 29 covered by just one second.
The Italian rider steps up to Moto2 next season with the Italtrans squad and will be keen to end an inconsistent final year in Moto3 with a decent result. Locatelli left it late, but produced a storming lap of 1m39.628s at the end of the 40-minute FP3 to go top by just under two tenths of a second.
RBA Racing’s Juanfran Guevara continued his strong showing this morning and was second fastest. The Spaniard has been inside the top two all weekend, sending him into this afternoon’s qualifying as one of the favourites for pole position. Estrella Galicia 0,0 Honda’s Aron Canet completed the top three in the dying seconds with a 1m39.808s.
2016 Moto3 World Champion Brad Binder was fourth fastest ahead of the second Leopard bike of Fabio Quartararo and Ongetta-Rivacold’s Niccolo Antonelli. Joan Mir made it three Leopard machine’s in the top 10 in seventh, with Jakub Kornfeil, Jorge Martin and Pecco Bagnaia rounding out the top 10.
Jorge Navarro’s weekend went from bad to worse this morning when he suffered yet another crash. The Spaniard had a heavy high-side at Turn 1 yesterday, massively denting his already shot to pieces confidence. 13 minutes into FP3, Navarro tucked the front-end of his Honda going through Turn 12 and was forced to watch the rest of the session from the sidelines. Stefan Valtulini also came off his motorcycle at Turn 10 in the final quarter of an hour of the session, but walked away unscathed.
As track and air temperatures barely reached double figures in FP3, Enea Bastianini, who was 16th, remains top of the pile on combined time sheets courtesy of his best time from FP2 yesterday.
Comments.
Loading comments…