Capirossi leads final free practice.

Donington fan Loris Capirossi rose to the top of this morning's final free practice, eclipsing his Friday qualifying time to hold off the ever present Sete Gibernau, whilst Friday pace setters Valentino Rossi and Troy Bayliss were left outside the top five.

Instead it was the likes of Max Biaggi, Olivier Jacque and Colin Edwards who proved to be Capirossi and Gibernau's nearest challengers - and with the first 11 riders all within a second on Friday's provisional grid, today's final session now looks like being even harder to predict.

Biaggi, still getting to grips with a new chassis, led most of the session after setting a 1min 31.5secs effort on his fifth of 28 laps - still some 0.3secs off Rossi's provisional pole time - but it would move the Roman from ninth to fifth if he can replicate it this afternoon.

Rossi remained a tenth behind his countryman for most of the session after an early lap of his own, but both he and Biaggi were pushed down a place with less than ten minutes of the hour remaining when Loris Capirossi took the top spot by 0.2secs - having set his fastest lap of the weekend so far.

The closing stages saw Sete Gibernau confirm his potential by moving ahead of Biaggi and trimming the #65 Ducati's lead to just 0.098secs, while Olivier Jacque and Colin Edwards demoted Rossi down a further two places to sixth.

John Hopkins thrilled his fans with a superb seventh on the GSV-R Suzuki - having found 0.7secs from Friday qualifying, while experienced team-mate Kagayama was left in sixteenth.

One place behind Hopper was Rossi's main rival yesterday, Troy Bayliss, the Australian lapping almost a second slower today as he worked on race pace.

McWilliams was 18th on the Proton, ahead of Kiyonari and the two Kawasakis, while Chris Burns put his 10-year-old Yamaha two-stroke ahead of Nobuatsu Aoki, but was 0.5secs slower than yesterday. The second WCM of David de Gea didn't complete a lap after technical problems.

Capirossi's best lap was less than a tenth slower than Rossi's overnight pole pace, suggesting the Repsol rider may have two Ducati's to deal with this afternoon, whilst Gibernau and Biaggi are also ready to pounce...

Saturday free practice:

1. Capirossi
2. Gibernau
3. Biaggi
4. Jacque
5. Edwards
6. Rossi
7. Hopkins
8. Bayliss
9. Ukawa
10. Hayden
11. Melandri
12. Barros
13. Nakano
14. Haga
15. Checa
16. Kagayama
17. Tamada
18. McWilliams
19. Kiyonari
20. McCoy
21. Pitt
22. Burns
23. Aoki
24. de Gea