Francesco Bagnaia shaded Fabio Quartararo by just 0.001s in the third practice session for the Algarve Grand Prix at the Algarve International Circuit in a field covered by just 1.1 seconds.
The bulk of the 45-minute outing was spent by the field working on long-run performance, with the customary final five-minute time attack to decide the riders graduating directly to the pole shootout on Saturday afternoon getting underway in earnest.
Suzuki’s Joan Mir led the way prior to the final dash with a 1:39.586s, the 2020 MotoGP world champion heading LCR’s Takaaki Nakagami and Quartararo.
Quartararo though soon re-established his Yamaha at the head of the timesheets as he fired in the fastest lap of the weekend-a 1:39.206s-just moments later, though Bagnaia would ultimately dump him from the position a short while after to the tune of 0.004s.
The Ducati man’s time would remain steadfastly at the top of the standings throughout the remainder of the session, though Quartararo would improve his time marginally to end up just 0.001s short of usurping the Italian.
Mir also looked bang on the pace, the Spaniard posting a time just 0.025s adrift of Bagnaia’s benchmark-three different machines being separated by the proverbial cigarette paper heading into qualifying.
Jack Miller continued to lap marginally slower than the leading riders en-route to fourth in the test ahead of an impressive Alex Marquez, who guided his LCR-run RC213-V to the accolade of top Honda.
Franco Morbidelli ensured both factory Yamaha’s would feature in the top half-dozen in sixth ahead of Alex Rins on the sister Suzuki, while Pol Espargaro bagged eighth on his Repsol Honda.
Luca Marini once again displayed strong one-lap pace on his Avintia Ducati in ninth, while Jorge Martin held on to grab the final automatic Q2 passage in tenth.
Nakagami would be the one to narrowly miss out on a direct pole shootout berth down in 11th, the second LCR entry lacking just 0.005s to Martin, with Iker Lecuona once again the fastest KTM in 12th and just over two-tenths of a second away from the Pramac rookie.
Aprilia-like KTM- also struggled to make an impact throughout FP3, with Aleix Espargaro’s best time-only enough for 16th-being deleted after the end of the session, meaning the two RS-GP’s completed the field with Maverick Vinales only able to muster up the 21st best time ahead of his team-mate.
Miguel Oliveira-who won at Portimao just 12 months ago-could only manage 15th overall a full four-tenths adrift of the top ten, while factory KTM team-mate Brad Binder was 18th.
Valentino Rossi had a slightly more positive start to the day relative to Friday, the Petronas SRT ace ending FP3 17th fastest ahead of team-mate Andrea Dovizioso in a lowly 20th.
