Assen MotoGP: Valentino Rossi quickest as rain spoils session

Pre-session rain created tricky track conditions, leading to an uneventful first half in which riders were reluctant to explore 'The Cathedral'.

It was left to Alvaro Bautista to provide any form of entertainment as the Gresini Honda rider was the first to go out on slicks with 15 minutes of the session remaining.

His aim was to try to improve on his Thursday best time of 1m34.466s by 0.007 seconds to gain automatic promotion to Q2, but the medium compound rear tyre was clearly not suited to the mixed conditions and the best he could manage was 1m34.912s.

Rossi managed to beat that time by 0.262s during a late flurry of activity in the final few minutes of the session, but no further gains were made by any of the riders and Aleix Espargaro continued to lead the combined timesheet ahead of Marc Marquez.

Pos  Rider             Team/Bike             Time       Gap      Laps
 1.  Valentino Rossi   Yamaha                1m34.650s           11
 2.  Alvaro Bautista   Gresini Honda         1m34.912s  +0.262s  12
 3.  Andrea Dovizioso  Ducati                1m35.213s  +0.563s  6
 4.  Stefan Bradl      LCR Honda             1m35.532s  +0.882s  5
 5.  Bradley Smith     Tech 3 Yamaha         1m35.715s  +1.065s  6
 6.  Karel Abraham     Cardion Honda         1m36.670s  +2.020s  8
 7.  Nicky Hayden      Aspar Honda           1m36.957s  +2.307s  9
 8.  Scott Redding     Gresini Honda         1m37.251s  +2.601s  10
 9.  Yonny Hernandez   Pramac Ducati         1m37.330s  +2.680s  11
10.  Cal Crutchlow     Ducati                1m37.754s  +3.104s  6
11.  Mike di Meglio    Avintia FTR-Kawasaki  1m38.130s  +3.480s  7
12.  Broc Parkes       PBM Aprilia           1m38.365s  +3.715s  7
13.  Hiroshi Aoyama    Aspar Honda           1m38.786s  +4.136s  8
14.  Hector Barbera    Avintia FTR-Kawasaki  1m39.404s  +4.754s  12
15.  Andrea Iannone    Pramac Ducati         1m39.820s  +5.170s  6
16.  Michael Laverty   PBM Aprilia           1m40.897s  +6.247s  6
17.  Colin Edwards     Forward Yamaha        1m49.292s  +14.642s 9
18.  Aleix Espargaro   Forward Yamaha        1m52.577s  +17.927s 5
19.  Pol Espargaro     Tech 3 Yamaha         1m54.425s  +19.775s 5
20.  Danilo Petrucci   Ioda Aprilia                              0
21.  Dani Pedrosa      Honda                                     0
22.  Marc Marquez      Honda                                     0
23.  Jorge Lorenzo     Yamaha                                    0