After making a clean sweep in Friday’s practices at the Circuit of the Americas, Marc Marquez’ start in the third and final timed free pratice was marred after just five minutes when he lost his Honda entering turn 19 and trying to save it, the rear grip returned (the tires were already used) turning his RC213V into a bucking bronco and highsiding the rookie who ended up a little battered and limping, but he was able to return to track and began whipping around the circuit as if nothing happened, and lowering the lap time to 2.
04.
991 and then bettering himself by almost two tenths to finish in 2.
04.
795 With the track offering more rubber, the riders began to slowly shave off precious tenths trying to catch up with Marquez’ monster lap times, but is was Dani Pedrosa who finally put a real dent into his team mate as he finished for the first time this weekend on top of the timesheets with a final flying hot lap in 2.
04.
408, sending a warning shot to Marquez.
Jorge Lorenzo took third with his last lap demoting Cal Crutchlow to fourth and the reigning World champion was able to shorten the gap to 0.
887s, losing time in the middle of the circuit.
Stefan Bradl dropped to fifth followed by an excellent Andrea Dovizioso who put in a last lap to take sixth ahead of Valentino Rossi who worked on corner entry braking.
Stefan Bradl was eighth, while two Ducati riders Nicky Hayden and Ben Spies closed out the top ten and were the last two riders to qualify for this afternoon’s QP2.
Aleix Espargaro was the fastest CRT rider again and he was 11th ahead of prototype riders Bradley Smith and Andrea Iannone and these three will probably be facing off in QP1 trying to get into QP2 with maybe the addition of Randy de Puniet who will have to shave between five tenths to one second to stay with small group of riders.
2013 MotoGP Austin FP3 results:01- Dani Pedrosa – Repsol Honda Team – Honda RC213V – 2’04.
408 02- Marc Marquez – Repsol Honda Team – Honda RC213V – + 0.
387 03- Jorge Lorenzo – Yamaha Factory Racing – Yamaha YZR M1 – + 0.
887 04- Cal Crutchlow – Monster Yamaha Tech 3 – Yamaha YZR M1 – + 1.
222 05- Stefan Bradl – LCR Honda MotoGP – Honda RC213V – + 1.
500 06- Andrea Dovizioso – Ducati Team – Ducati Desmosedici GP13 – + 1.
555 07- Valentino Rossi – Yamaha Factory Racing – Yamaha YZR M1 – + 1.
765 08- Alvaro Bautista – GO&FUN Honda Gresini – Honda RC213V – + 1.
892 09- Nicky Hayden – Ducati Team – Ducati Desmosedici GP13 – + 2.
214 10- Ben Spies – Ignite Pramac Racing – Ducati Desmosedici GP13 – + 2.
454 11- Aleix Espargaro – Power Electronics Aspar – ART GP13 – + 2.
741 12- Bradley Smith – Monster Yamaha Tech 3 – Yamaha YZR M1 – + 3.
306 13- Andrea Iannone – Energy T.
I.
Pramac Racing – Ducati Desmosedici GP13 – + 3.
341 14- Randy De Puniet – Power Electronics Aspar – ART GP13 – + 3.
997 15- Yonny Hernandez – Paul Bird Motorsport – ART GP13 – + 4.
106 16- Karel Abraham – Cardion AB Motoracing – ART GP13 – + 4.
841 17- Danilo Petrucci – CAME Iodaracing Project – Ioda Suter BMW – + 5.
001 18- Hector Barbera – Avintia Blusens – BQR FTR – + 5.
096 19- Claudio Corti – NGM Mobile Forward Racing – FTR Kawasaki – + 5.
252 20- Hiroshi Aoyama – Avintia Blusens – BQR FTR – + 5.
267 21- Colin Edwards – NGM Mobile Forward Racing – FTR Kawasaki – + 5.
290 22- Michael Laverty – Paul Bird Motorsport – PBM 01 – + 5.
701 23- Bryan Staring – GO&FUN Honda Gresini – FTR Honda MGP13 – + 6.
609 24- Blake Young – Attack Performance Racing – Attack Performance APR – + 7.
120 25- Lukas Pesek – CAME Iodaracing Project – Ioda Suter BMW – + 9.
102 26- Mike Barnes – GPTech – BCL GP212 – + 11.
875