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Australia
Practice report

Austria MotoGP: Marquez dominates FP3, Rossi to Q1

Marc Marquez dominated a damp Saturday morning MotoGP practice session in Austria, while Valentino Rossi will be forced to take part in the first part of qualifying.

Marc Marquez, Repsol Honda Team

Marc Marquez, Repsol Honda Team

Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

The session was held under damp, drying conditions with the majority of the riders starting on wet tyres and Jorge Lorenzo dominating the early stages.

However, it only took 12 minutes for the track to be quicker on slicks when Rossi outpaced the Ducati rider.

The top time was continuously lowered before Lorenzo retook the lead with a 1m30.687s, a time still nearly seven seconds slower than Andrea Dovizioso's benchmark from Friday.

Despite the track getting drier, Lorenzo led for nearly 20 minutes when Jack Miller finally demoted him, only for Marquez to go a second faster a lap later.

Marquez then improved significantly one more time and his 1m26.396s was unreachable for the rest of the field, ending up topping the session by 1.7s.

A trio of British riders followed Marquez with KTM's Bradley Smith taking second, ahead of Scott Redding and Cal Crutchlow.

Marc VDS Honda's Tom Luthi was fifth followed by the top Ducati of Miller.

Dovizioso was seventh as the top 10 was completed by Alex Rins, Hafizh Syahrin and Maverick Vinales.

Lorenzo and Rossi were only 14th and 15th respectively and, with nobody improving on their FP1 times, the latter is forced to take part in Q1, having only finished 11th in the opening practice of the weekend.

The 10 riders to automatically make it to Q2 are the three Ducati GP18s of Dovizioso, Lorenzo and Danilo Petrucci, Honda trio Marquez, Dani Pedrosa and Crutchlow, the Yamahas of Johann Zarco and Vinales, as well as Andrea Iannone (Suzuki) and Tito Rabat (Avintia Ducati).

FP3 results

Cla # Rider Bike Time Gap
1 93 Spain Marc Marquez  Honda 1'26.496  
2 38 United Kingdom Bradley Smith  KTM 1'28.280 1.784
3 45 United Kingdom Scott Redding  Aprilia 1'28.478 1.982
4 35 United Kingdom Cal Crutchlow  Honda 1'28.653 2.157
5 12 Switzerland Thomas Luthi  Honda 1'28.744 2.248
6 43 Australia Jack Miller  Ducati 1'28.967 2.471
7 4 Italy Andrea Dovizioso  Ducati 1'29.008 2.512
8 42 Spain Alex Rins  Suzuki 1'29.014 2.518
9 55 Malaysia Hafizh Syahrin  Yamaha 1'29.206 2.710
10 25 Spain Maverick Viñales  Yamaha 1'29.208 2.712
11 10 Belgium Xavier Simeon  Ducati 1'29.762 3.266
12 17 Czech Republic Karel Abraham  Ducati 1'30.255 3.759
13 5 France Johann Zarco  Yamaha 1'30.390 3.894
14 99 Spain Jorge Lorenzo  Ducati 1'30.687 4.191
15 46 Italy Valentino Rossi  Yamaha 1'31.375 4.879
16 19 Spain Alvaro Bautista  Ducati 1'31.644 5.148
17 26 Spain Dani Pedrosa  Honda 1'32.239 5.743
18 30 Japan Takaaki Nakagami  Honda 1'32.363 5.867
19 21 Italy Franco Morbidelli  Honda 1'32.451 5.955
20 9 Italy Danilo Petrucci  Ducati 1'34.465 7.969
21 29 Italy Andrea Iannone  Suzuki 1'35.186 8.690
22 41 Spain Aleix Espargaro  Aprilia 1'38.257 11.761
- 53 Spain Tito Rabat  Ducati no time -

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Edition

Australia