Ongetta Rivacold’s Romano Fenati shot to the top of the FP3 timesheets in Austin with a last-gasp effort of 2m16.273s to go two tenths clear of the pack heading into qualifying.
Coming into today’s session, Aron Canet was looking almost unbeatable having dominated proceedings on Friday. And indeed, early in this morning’s running, the EG 0,0 Honda rider sat comfortably atop the timing screens.
As the session wound down, however, the Spaniard came under threat, first from Jorge Martin, who went fastest of all with the best lap of the weekend of a 2m16.479s. Traffic on his final tour stopped him from improving, whilst Fenati utilised clear track to go 0.206s quicker.
Canet took the chequered flag in third, almost half a second down and with a bit of thinking to do ahead of qualifying. Impressively, Darryn Binder ended the morning fourth fastest having hovered around the top five all session.
The South African, who was top KTM rider in FP3, edged the second EG 0,0 Honda of Enea Bastianini, who in turn was only marginally quicker than Sky VR46’s Nicolo Bulega.
Niccolo Antonelli was nine tenths off the pace in seventh on his Red Bull KTM, with Juanfran Guevara, Andrea Migno and Fabio Di Giannantonio completing the top 10. Antonelli’s team-mate Bo Bendsneyder was just 0.002s outside in 11th.
Marcos Ramirez put in a decent effort of 2m17.550s to go 12th quickest on his first visit to the Circuit of the Americas ahead of the equally impressive Kaito Toba on the Team Asia Honda. Championship leader Joan Mir looked out of sorts in 14th, with Ayumu Sasaki completing the top 15.
