Petrucci fastest in FP3 as Rossi crashes
ByAutoSport
Published 17/11/2018 at 10:42 GMT
Pramac Ducati's Danilo Petrucci topped the Saturday morning MotoGP practice at Valencia, as Valentino Rossi crashed and was resigned to Q1 alongside Maverick Vinales and Jorge Lorenzo.
Eurosport
Image credit: Eurosport
After a fully wet Friday, FP3 also kicked off on a soaked track - but with no rain falling, improving on Friday's times seemed possible.
But it started raining almost immediately and the field failed to get close to Marc Marquez's Friday benchmark of 1m39.767s for the majority of the session.
Rossi led the way early on while times were in the 1m41s region, but the Yamaha rider's progress was soon halted with a highside crash at Turn 4.
Marquez took over at the top and held a comfortable lead for a large part of the session until Petrucci edged him out by half a tenth.
Although Ducati works rider Andrea Dovizioso then set a 1m39.800s and led into the final 10 minutes, Petrucci was able to improve again in the dying stages and topped the session with a 1m39.712s.
Dovizioso and Marquez were second and third, and Jack Miller claimed fourth before suffering a crash after the chequered flag fell.
Johann Zarco was the top Yamaha in fifth, as both factory riders are outside of the top 10 and will have to take part in Q1.
Vinales missed out on the top 10 by 0.061s in 11th, as Rossi finished two places further behind.
Marquez's Honda team-mate Dani Pedrosa ended up sixth, followed by an impressive Pol Espargaro in seventh for KTM.
Alex Rins and Aleix Espargaro led Suzuki's and Aprilia's efforts in eighth and ninth respectively, and Ducati wildcard Michele Pirro held on to 10th despite a late crash.
Rins fell at the end of the session, with Suzuki team-mate Andrea Iannone and Aleix Espargaro also having incidents during the practice.
Iannone ended up only 15th, as the recovering Jorge Lorenzo could only manage 17th, 1.3s off the pace.
FP3 times
Scan me
Related Topics
Share this article
Advertisement
Advertisement