Alex Marquez was close to lap record pace in Saturday morning’s final practice, the Marc VDS rider edging championship leader and team-mate Franco Morbdielli by just over half a tenth.
Morbidelli seemed a little rattled after Friday’s second session, in which he suffered his first crash of 2017. However, his Turn 9 tumble seemed to bear no ill effect this morning, Morbidelli getting to within eight hundredths of the outright lap record 10 minutes into the session.
As the session progressed the Italian was unable to replicate this effort, however, and Marquez was able to surpass it in the closing stages, albeit by just 0.055s.
Mattia Pasini has been setting some impressive lap times all weekend, and FP3 was no different for the Italtrans rider. Pasini, who is yet to score a points this year despite his strong form, was third fastest ahead of countryman Simone Corsi.
Red Bull KTM spent the morning trying a revised front fairing,, which seemingly proved to be a positive update as Miguel Oliveira was able to jump up to fifth in the closing stages with a 1m42.868s.
Luca Marini was a decent sixth on his Forward Racing Kalex, with Jorge Navarro looking more comfortable this weekend on the Gresini machine in seventh. Dominique Aegerter, who suffered a small tumble at Turn 2 halfway through the session, Francesco Bagnaia and Marcel Schrotter completed the top 10.
Sandro Cortese was just 0.002s shy of his Dynavolt team-mate in 11th, whilst Tom Luthi needs to up his game for qualifying later today to improve on 12th spot if he is to stand a chance of continuing his 100 percent podium run tomorrow.
