Red Bull Ring MotoGP: Marquez comfortably fastest in FP3

Marquez, who had a carbon-reinforced chassis on both of his bikes, beat his own benchmark from Friday soon after the session began with a 1m23.788s as he and Valentino Rossi locked out the top two for most of the Saturday morning session.

Rossi was 11th in the combined order before FP3, but was quickly able to move into the top 10 with a time of 1m24.250s.

The rest of the field started to cut Marquez's into sizeable gap towards the end of the running, with Andrea Dovizioso and Fabio Quartararo taking turns in second place before Vinales went quickest.

But Marquez then switched to a new soft rear tyre and then quickly retook the lead by over three tenths with a 1m23.251s.

There was no further response from Vinales afterwards and it was Marquez leading the Yamaha man as the session ended.

The factory Ducatis of Andrea Dovizioso and Danilo Petrucci set identical times to take third and fourth, just 0.002s slower than Vinales.

Yamaha riders Quartararo and Rossi completed the top six, while the third Ducati GP19 of Jack Miller (Pramac) secured seventh.

Takaaki Nakagami (LCR Honda) secured eighth ahead of the sole Suzuki of Alex Rins and KTM's Pol Espargaro, who set his best time while following Miller and Marquez.

He salvaged 10th, beating Cal Crutchlow by half a tenth, with the Briton thus forced to take part in Q1 later today.

Miguel Oliveira (Tech 3 KTM) was an impressive sixth on Friday but he dropped to 12th in the combined order after FP3.

Repsol Honda's Stefan Bradl was the only rider failing to improve his overall laptime in FP3, the German ending up only 20th.

Session results:

Cla	#	Rider	Bike	Time	Gap
1	93	Marc Marquez	Honda	1'23.251
2	12	Maverick Viñales	Yamaha	1'23.591	0.340
3	4	Andrea Dovizioso	Ducati	1'23.593	0.342
4	9	Danilo Petrucci	Ducati	1'23.593	0.342
5	20	Fabio Quartararo	Yamaha	1'23.637	0.386
6	46	Valentino Rossi	Yamaha	1'23.702	0.451
7	43	Jack Miller	Ducati	1'23.749	0.498
8	30	Takaaki Nakagami	Honda	1'23.764	0.513
9	42	Alex Rins	Suzuki	1'23.974	0.723
10	44	Pol Espargaro	KTM	1'24.016	0.765
11	35	Cal Crutchlow	Honda	1'24.068	0.817
12	88	Miguel Oliveira	KTM	1'24.095	0.844
13	21	Franco Morbidelli	Yamaha	1'24.166	0.915
14	5	Johann Zarco	KTM	1'24.333	1.082
15	63	Francesco Bagnaia	Ducati	1'24.472	1.221
16	53	Tito Rabat	Ducati	1'24.480	1.229
17	41	Aleix Espargaro	Aprilia	1'24.616	1.365
18	29	Andrea Iannone	Aprilia	1'24.658	1.407
19	17	Karel Abraham	Ducati	1'24.740	1.489
20	6	Stefan Bradl	Honda	1'24.770	1.519
21	55	Hafizh Syahrin	KTM	1'24.775	1.524
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