Vinales leads Quartararo as Yamaha Assen dominance continues in FP3

Maverick Vinales made it three from three as he topped the leaderboard in third practice for the Dutch TT at Assen ahead of Yamaha team-mate Fabio Quartararo.

Vinales continued his formidable Friday form early on as he fired in the first sub-1:33 tour of the weekend just past the mid-point of the test-a 1:32.848s-to establish himself at the head of the timesheets once again.

He soon shaved further time from his effort to sit on a 1:32.686s, though Quartararo was keen to get in on some of his fellow M1 rider’s time at the top as he posted a 1:32.597s shortly afterwards to move ahead for the first time this weekend.

With the anticipated rain ultimately not making an appearance for an FP3-replaced instead by blue skies and little cloud-the customary late-FP3 time attack was well and truly on the menu, Vinales taking his opportunity to slot himself back into the top spot with a blistering 1:32.336s as the session entered its twilight stages.  

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Quartararo did find improvement with his own final push efforts, though could only get to within 0.197s of Vinales to complete a factory Yamaha 1-2 as the session came to a close.

Pol Espargaro also continued to display the strong pace he showed throughout Friday as he ended up third quickest for Honda, while brother Aleix Espargaro jumped up to fourth right at the last moment for Aprilia after looking set to miss out on an automatic Q2 spot.

Suzuki pairing Joan Mir and Alex Rins were next up in fifth and sixth, the GSX-RR looking more at home on the twisty Assen circuit, while Takaaki Nakagami rebounded from having an earlier strong laptime deleted for track limits to close out FP3 seventh fastest for LCR.

Miguel Oliveira was top KTM in eighth ahead of Valentino Rossi’s Petronas SRT Yamaha, while Jack Miller was the only Ducati pilot to bag a guaranteed Q2 passage as the last man to do so in tenth.

Just missing out were the Aussie’s fellow Desmosedici GP21 riders Johann Zarco and Francesco Bagnaia in 11^th and 12^th respectively, while Jorge Martin had his lap deleted after initially looking set to thrust himself into the top ten early in his final tour on the second Pramac Ducati.

Marc Marquez fell back down to earth with a bang after scoring an emphatic victory at the Sachsenring last weekend as he could manage only 15^th in FP3 just ahead of Brad Binder’s KTM, while Lorenzo Savadori’s strong weekend faded slightly as he was shuffled back to 19^th after looking like a top ten challenger early on.

Petronas SRT substitute rider Garrett Gerloff meanwhile continued to make progress as he contests his first full MotoGP race event, the American setting a time only 1.9 seconds away from Vinales’ benchmark, though another crash as the session approached its climax blotted his copybook ever so slightly.