Francesco Bagnaia fired himself to the top of the pile in FP3 to lead the way at Jerez ahead of Friday pacesetter Fabio Quartararo as Alex Rins missed the ten.
The cooler conditions seen on Saturday morning relative to Friday afternoon’s FP2 test meant that improvements were inevitable, with Aleix Espargaro immediately moving his Aprilia from 13th overall in the combined table to fifth as he lead the session early on.
His time was soon beaten to Suzuki’s Joan Mir who also moved himself into the overall top ten, the Spaniard posting a 1:37.122s effort – though his gambit would come under attack in the final 15 minutes as the field battled to secure one of the ten automatic pole shootout berths.
Bagnaia took his chance to strike as he banged in the weekend’s first sub-1:37 effort, his 1:36.782s leaving him only two-tenths of a second adrift of the outright two-wheeled lap record of the Jerez venue.
Despite the entire field improving their efforts, the Ducati man’s time would prove untouchable, though Quartararo would come just 0.006s away from dethroning the 2021 MotoGP vice-champion despite having already aborted his first two attempts.
Takaaki Nakagami impressed on his LCR-run Honda to nab the third best time ahead of factory Honda racer Marc Marquez, who utilised a handy tow from Jack Miller having struggled to even crack the top ten while on his own.
Maverick Vinales posted a strong improvement towards the end to put his Aprilia fifth ahead of Enea Bastianini and team-mate Aleix Espargaro, while Mir ended up being shuffled back to eighth by the end of the session.
Jorge Martin just managed to squeak into automatic-Q2 position in the dying moments ahead of Miller, VR46 rookie Marco Bezzecchi narrowly missing out on a chance to skip Q1, as was the second Pramac Ducati of Johann Zarco who ended up 12th.
Joint series leader Alex Rins also lacked one-lap performance en-route to 13th overall, meaning he will have to try and fight for one of the two remaining pole shootout spots in the opening segment of qualifying.
KTM struggled once again in dry conditions with Brad Binder its highest representative in 14th ahead of team-mate Miguel Oliveira in 16th, while Pol Espargaro failed to string a lap together down in a lowly 17th, the Qatar rostrum finisher crashing at Turn 6 on his final attempt.
Alex Marquez was straight down to earth with a bang following a strong Portimao outing as he crashed at Turn 13 on his way to 22nd overall, just behind wild-carding Honda test rider Stefan Bradl who also suffered a spill at the same bend while trying to follow Marc.
Keyword: Bagnaia heads Quartararo in frantic Jerez FP3