Nakagami leads Honda 1-2 during COTA MotoGP warm-up

Takaaki Nakagami kept up his impressive MotoGP warm-up form at COTA by finishing fastest from Marc Marquez.

Two of the hot favourites for today’s race, Francesco Bagnaia and Marquez both started the session on a used hard front tyre and soft rear. 

Marquez, who was following the pole man early on, went fastest before Fabio Quartararo bettered the Spanaird by a tenth. 

Quartararo’s time at the top was only momentary though, as Marquez fired his Repsol Honda back to the top of the times, while fellow Honda rider Nakagami slotted into second. 

It was a much better start to day three for Aleix Espargaro who was consistently inside the top five. The Aprilia rider has crashed four times already this weekend. 

With just under ten minutes to go, Nakagami became the fourth rider to go fastest - nearly three tenths of a second ahead of Marquez.

Alex Rins, MotoGP’ last race winner at COTA then split the two Honda’s, while Jack Miller suffered a fall at turn one. 

Not the start to race day Miller would have hoped for, especially after yesterday’s disappointing Q2 which saw him claim tenth - his worst qualifying result of the year.

While Rins retained a top three position through to the chequered flag, team-mate Joan Mir was mired down the order for much of the session. 

A late effort from Mir did manage to elevate him to sixth place, but the current world champion was still over seven tenths away from Nakagami who went even quicker.

The Japanese rider’s advantage was then cut to just half a tenth by Marquez late on, as the two Honda men were over four tenths clear of Rins.