Lorenzo leads last practice in Portugal

The MotoGP class made its final preparations before qualifying at Estoril on Saturday morning in the last free practice session, in which Jorge Lorenzo was again fastest. The Fiat Yamaha rider – who was quickest on day one with his FP2 time – set a lap of 1’48.853, which was just over three-tenths of a second off his own quickest lap of the weekend so far. The 2010 World Champion also escaped injury when he had a crash at the very end of the session at turn 13 as the wet track continued to make matters a little complicated for the riders.

Lorenzo was the only rider under 1’49” in the session as he finished 0.582s ahead of team-mate Valentino Rossi, who himself was just over half a second faster Andrea Dovizioso. The Repsol Honda rider did manage to improve on his previous best time from the day before as he completed the top three in the session.

Before Lorenzo experienced his fall Casey Stoner had crashed in an identical manner in exactly the same part of the track, but fortunately the Ducati rider was also unscathed and went on to set the fourth fastest time of the session. Colin Edwards (Monster Yamaha Tech 3) and Marco Simoncelli (San Carlo Honda Gresini) completed the top six, whilst Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda) was eighth at just under two seconds off Lorenzo. Also inside the top ten in FP3 was Aleix Espargaró (Pramac Racing) in seventh, whilst Ducati rider Nicky Hayden had a fall at turn two a third of the way into the session and ended in 13th.

The leading times across the combined practice sessions remained the same as the FP2 order, with the top five being Lorenzo, Hayden, Rossi, Stoner and Ben Spies.