Bagnaia: Aspar Mahindra fast in both wet and dry at Assen

Having finished 10th in Friday practices and third in final practice riding under changing conditions, the VR46 academy rider is confident of a good showing in Sunday's race.

A late rain in qualifying meant Bagnaia was left with little time to improve on his best time, thus starts 10th tomorrow. "I’m not so happy with qualifying," he said after Saturday's session.

"Because I think we can do a little bit better, our pace is enough for the front two rows of the grid, but what’s done is done.

"All weekend we’ve been fast and right in the top 10, I think today if I had a slightly better slipstream on my laps I could have got much further up," he added.

The Italian hopes for a dry race but adds the bike is good for all conditions. "In wet or dry conditions we are fast, which is important.

"Tomorrow we’ll see if we can fight for the win, this is a track that suits us and we could really push the other riders," he said.

"I’d prefer to have a dry race tomorrow, but I don’t know what will happen with the weather, it’s so hard to predict what will happen tomorrow so we’ll have to be prepared for whatever."

Binder leads rest of the pack

Platinum Bay's Darryn Binder was the next best Mahindra-powered rider at 20th ahead of Peugeot's John McPhee, who looked fast all through the weekend.

Teammate Alexis Masbou was 22nd with Japanese Tatsuki Suzuki in his CIP-Mahindra 26th followed by injured Jorge Martin's replacement Albert Arenas.

The Spanish rider having to learn the circuit in FP3 couldn't improve after late rain in the session.

Team Italia's Stefano Valtulini finished 28th with CIP's Fabio Spiranelli 30th, Lorenzo Petrarca (Team Italia) 31st and the returning Danny Webb (CIP) 32nd.