Misano MotoGP: Lorenzo dominates FP3 ahead of Marquez and Rossi

The Spaniard, a three-time winner of the race, had run new aerodynamic winglets late in FP2 to set the best time, but had no need them this morning to achieve the same feat.

While Lorenzo and Marquez ran high-1m33s early in the session, Pedrosa broke up their dominance, slotting in within 0.02s of Lorenzo's FP2 benchmark.

Yet the frontrunners would go on to be largely inactive for most of the session and the FP2 time stood until that man Lorenzo took a full seven tenths off his lap record with 1m32.192s.

Marquez responded shortly, posing a time two tenths behind Lorenzo, but would not match his compatriot and had to do with second.

At the chequered flag, Valentino Rossi moved up to third, beating Ducati's Andrea Dovizioso by just 0.009s but trailing his teammate Lorenzo by six tenths.

Pedrosa ended up fifth, with Michele Pirro and Bradley Smith posting late improvements to leapfrog Andrea Iannone, whose first bike had expired on-track early in the session.

The list of automatic qualifiers to Q2 was made up by Pol Espargaro and Danilo Petrucci, fresh off his first podium at Silverstone.

Cal Crutchlow just missed out at the last second, as did the two Suzukis of Aleix Espargaro and Maverick Vinales.

Eugene Laverty and local hero Alex de Angelis were the two riders to fall during FP3.