Fabio Quartararo headed FP3 for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone to continue his domination of the event so far, lowering his own lap record from yesterday in the process.
The Petronas SRT man was quiet for most of the session, with his FP2 leading time of 1:59.225 from yesterday remaining the fastest for most of the session.
Cal Crutchlow was the first to shave time from his benchmark, the LCR rider posting a 1:59.184 to shoot to the top of the leaderboard.
Quartararo then hit back with the first ever sub 59 second lap of Silverstone with a 1:58.901, before going even faster on his next run with a 1:58.727.
He looked to have secured the top spot with only a couple of minutes remaining in the session, but Valentino Rossi then banged in a 1:58.693 to move ahead into P1, relegating the satellite M1 down to second.
Quartararo wasn’t finished though, and stormed to a 1:58.547 on his final effort to top his third consecutive practice session having dominated Friday running-beating his best effort yesterday by just under seven-tenths.
Rossi had to make do with second just ahead of Honda’s Marc Marquez, who managed a time just over two-tenths down on Quartararo, while Jack Miller shrugged off reliability issues with his first bike to post the fourth fastest time.
Miller’s Ducati GP19 gave up the ghost on the run down to Stowe, forcing the Aussie to run through the gravel and come to a stop. He re-joined the track on his spare Desmosedici to secure his automatic Q2 spot.
Danilo Petrucci out-shone factory Ducati team-mate Andrea Dovizioso to secure the fifth quickest time-the Austria race winner managing just 14th fastest and having to contest Q1 as a result.
Cal Cruthlow slipped to sixth at the conclusion of the session just ahead of Maverick Vinales on the second factory Yamaha, while Franco Morbidelli continued his strong form on the Petronas SRT M1 in eighth.
The final two riders to progress directly to Q2 were LCR’s Takaaki Nakagami and Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaro, who impressively out-paced Suzuki’s Alex Rins in the closing minutes.
Rins is the first of the Q1 battlers in 11th with Dovizioso 14th just behind the two KTM machines of Miguel Oliveria and Pol Espargaro.
The injured Jorge Lorenzo continued to struggle on his competitive return down in 22nd and last place.
