Phillip Island: Marquez flies in FP3, Rossi still struggles

Points leader Valentino Rossi of Yamaha did improve his time today, but it was only good enough for seventh fastest, 0.734s off Marquez’s pace.

Story of the session

Track conditions were dry but cold, with a stiff breeze blowing in off the sea.

Marquez’s fastest time of the weekend so far was 1m29.383s from FP2, but that was in no danger of being topped for the majority of the session.

Rossi was first out of the blocks, having been 0.658s off the pace on Friday, and jumped up to sixth overall on 1m29.815s, 0.432s off the fastest time.

At that time, only Andrea Iannone was lapping a couple of tenths faster on his works Ducati, with Lorenzo and Marquez lapping roughly in the same bracket on long race simulation runs.

Suzuki’s Aleix Espargaro went ninth on 1m30.031s with 10 minutes remaining, just one thousandth quicker than Bradley Smith, who immediately went on to the bubble of qualifying for Q2 automatically on his Tech 3 Yamaha.

Late flurry of quick times

As the end of the session approached, Marquez unleashed a phenomenal time of 1m29.081s at the start of his third run, finding three tenths over his Friday best. However, he was then forced to go off avoiding Pol Espargaro, much to his annoyance.

Lorenzo managed a 1m29.520s, which was third-fastest in today’s session.

The LCR Honda of Crutchlow went P2 on 1m29.509s, just failing to beat Lorenzo’s Friday time, but Scott Redding was the big mover on his Marc VDS Honda and leapt to P4 (sixth overall) from outside the top 10 on 1m29.675s.

Smith was outside the Q2 cutoff, and jumped up to ninth overall at the very last moment on 1m29.877s.

Aleix Espargaro missed out on Q2 by 0.02s, with Ducati’s Andrea Dovizioso just nicking the 10^th spot.

Australian GP FP3 times

Pos	Rider	Bike	Time	Gap
1	Marc Marquez	Honda RC213V	1:29.081
2	Cal Crutchlow	Honda RC213V	1:29.509	+0.428
3	Jorge Lorenzo	Yamaha YZR-M1	1:29.520	+0.439
4	Scott Redding	Honda RC213V	1:29.675	+0.594
5	Maverick Viñales	Suzuki GSX-RR	1:29.715	+0.634
6	Andrea Iannone	Ducati GP15	1:29.755	+0.674
7	Valentino Rossi	Yamaha YZR-M1	1:29.815	+0.734
8	Bradley Smith	Yamaha YZR-M1	1:29.877	+0.796
9	Andrea Dovizioso	Ducati GP15	1:29.962	+0.881
10	Aleix Espargaro	Suzuki GSX-RR	1:29.982	+0.901
11	Jack Miller	Honda	1:30.034	+0.953
12	Hector Barbera	Ducati GP14	1:30.163	+1.082
13	Pol Espargaro	Yamaha YZR-M1	1:30.193	+1.112
14	Danilo Petrucci	Ducati GP14	1:30.295	+1.214
15	Nicky Hayden	Honda RC213V-RS	1:30.351	+1.270
16	Alvaro Bautista	Aprilia RS-GP	1:30.404	+1.323
17	Yonny Hernandez	Ducati GP14	1:30.414	+1.333
18	Dani Pedrosa	Honda RC213V	1:30.505	+1.424
19	Eugene Laverty	Honda RC213V-RS	1:30.766	+1.685
20	Loris Baz	Yamaha Forward	1:31.145	+2.064
21	Mike di Meglio	Ducati GP14	1:31.176	+2.095
22	Stefan Bradl	Aprilia RS-GP	1:31.419	+2.338
23	Anthony West	Honda RC213V-RS	1:31.898	+2.817
24	Toni Elias	Yamaha Forward	1:31.913	+2.832
25	Damian Cudlin	ART	1:34.302	+5.221