Miller leads Ducati quintet in FP3 as Espargaro, Marquez miss out on top ten
A strong start to FP3 from Marquez saw him lead the way by over two tenths from reigning MotoGP champion Fabio Quartararo.
With lap times around 1.5 seconds off the fastest day-one time set by Martin, Marco Bezzecchi went a long way to reducing that margin after going seven tenths clear of Marquez.
Making it a rookie 1-2 for Ducati, Fabio Di Giannantonio went second quickest behind Bezzecchi.
Bouncing back from his mixed day-one which included two crashes, Espargaro then put his Aprilia RS-GP22 machine in third place.
Then came a stunning ‘save’ from Marquez as the eight-time world champion momentarily lost the front-end at the final corner, before somehow picking the bike back up on his left shoulder.
Marquez ran off-track as he continued to pull off what was a very long front-end slide.
Marquez was not so lucky later in the session as he suffered a fast crash at turn seven.
The Spaniard was back to his feet immediately and appeared fine, however, his Repsol Honda machine was completely wrecked.
Starting his time attack run very early, Joan Mir moved into the top ten with P9, one place behind future team-mate Marquez.
Lighting up the times in sector one, Quartararo looked set to challenge Martin for top spot on combined times before losing out as the lap developed.
Rins was the next to challenge Martin’s time, but like Quartararo he failed to overhaul the Spaniard.
As his team-mate Bagnaia suffered a big moment heading into turn 14, Miller set a sensational time of 1:46.992s in order to go four tenths clear of Martin.
Miller’s time was also the first sub 1m 47s lap of the weekend before Quartararo reduced the Australian’s advantage to just over two tenths.
There was stunning pace shown from both factory KTM riders as Brad Binder went second - two tenths slower than Miller - before finding even more time on his last run.
That was then followed up by Miguel Oliveira going third, moments before Binder crashed at turn two.
The South African’s crash started somewhat of a crash-fest as Darryn Binder, Cal Crutchlow and Alex Rins all went down within a few seconds of one-another.
Late improvements from Bagnaia, Bezzecchi and Enea Bastianini pushed Espargaro out of the top ten, while team-mate Vinales and Marquez also missed out on the top ten.
