MotoGP Indianapolis: Marc Marquez on top in third practice session

The reigning world champion went fastest with his first flying lap of the session early on, and with seven minutes remaining he extended his advantage over the field to four tenths of a second.

At that point, Friday pacesetter Jorge Lorenzo was second fastest on his factory Yamaha, but by the end of the session he had been pushed down to fifth by Bradley Smith, Andrea Iannone and Dani Pedrosa.

Lorenzo's session was much more convincing than his team-mate Valentino Rossi's though, as the championship leader spent much of the session outside of the top 10 cut-off to automatically pass through to Q2 later today.

Rossi used a medium rear tyre to briefly get as high as fourth, but he was shuffled back to ninth.

While Rossi eventually made the Q2 cut, Ducati's Andrea Dovizioso was a high-profile casualty as he failed to improve on his best time from Friday and dropped to 11th in the combined classification.

Both Ducatis appeared to be in trouble in the closing stages, with Iannone's first lap of his final run only good enough for 10th (and knocking Dovizioso out of a Q2 berth), but Iannone found more time on his next effort to move up to third as the flag came out.

Yamaha-contracted Tech 3 rider Pol Espargaro suffered his second crash of the weekend in the closing minutes, falling on the approach to Turn 2 shortly after setting a time good enough for eighth by the time FP3 concluded.

FP3 TIMES:

Pos	Rider	Team	Bike	Time	Gap	Laps
1	Marc Marquez	Honda	Honda	1m32.392s	-	21
2	Bradley Smith	Tech 3	Yamaha	1m32.421s	0.029s	23
3	Andrea Iannone	Ducati	Ducati	1m32.718s	0.326s	21
4	Dani Pedrosa	Honda	Honda	1m32.759s	0.367s	19
5	Jorge Lorenzo	Yamaha	Yamaha	1m32.819s	0.427s	23
6	Cal Crutchlow	LCR	Honda	1m32.851s	0.459s	21
7	Aleix Espargaro	Suzuki	Suzuki	1m32.914s	0.522s	19
8	Pol Espargaro	Tech 3	Yamaha	1m32.945s	0.553s	17
9	Valentino Rossi	Yamaha	Yamaha	1m32.981s	0.589s	22
10	Maverick Vinales	Suzuki	Suzuki	1m32.998s	0.606s	18
11	Yonny Hernandez	Pramac Racing	Ducati	1m33.290s	0.898s	20
12	Andrea Dovizioso	Ducati	Ducati	1m33.293s	0.901s	17
13	Scott Redding	Marc VDS	Honda	1m33.300s	0.908s	19
14	Hector Barbera	Avintia Racing	Ducati	1m33.503s	1.111s	20
15	Danilo Petrucci	Pramac Racing	Ducati	1m33.570s	1.178s	18
16	Jack Miller	LCR	Honda	1m34.021s	1.629s	17
17	Eugene Laverty	Aspar	Honda	1m34.036s	1.644s	19
18	Nicky Hayden	Aspar	Honda	1m34.053s	1.661s	18
19	Mike Di Meglio	Avintia Racing	Ducati	1m34.332s	1.940s	19
20	Alvaro Bautista	Aprilia Gresini	Aprilia	1m34.348s	1.956s	22
21	Stefan Bradl	Aprilia Gresini	Aprilia	1m34.608s	2.216s	20
22	Alex de Angelis	IodaRacing Project	ART/Aprilia	1m35.188s	2.796s	18
23	Toni Elias	AB Motoracing	Honda	1m36.412s	4.020s	16