Rossi edges Stoner in third practice

Stoner looked set to continue his dominant practice form, having led the majority of today's session in addition to going quickest in both Thursday sessions.

But Rossi was the last man to cross the line at the end of the hour, and set a 1:37.537 on his final tour - sufficient to depose Stoner by 0.043 seconds.

Nicky Hayden continued his strong form with third, ahead of Rossi's teammate Colin Edwards.

After a difficult Thursday, John Hopkins appeared to have found more pace in his Suzuki as he moved into the top five on his last run, although his teammate Chris Vermeulen only managed 15th.

Tech 3 Yamaha's Makoto Tamada repeated his superb sixth place from practice two, while Pramac D'Antin also continued to show promise with Alex Barros in seventh and Alex Hofmann in the top ten for much of the hour before falling to 11th late on.

Having been second fastest yesterday, Randy de Puniet swapped fastest times with Stoner in the early minutes of this morning's session, but did not improve later in the hour and fell to ninth, between Dani Pedrosa and Loris Capirossi.

Gresini Honda's troubles continued - after Toni Elias suffered a broken leg in a crash yesterday, their remaining rider Marco Melandri could only manage 17th place in final practice.

Pos  Rider             Bike      Time
 1.  Valentino Rossi   Yamaha    1:37.537
 2.  Casey Stoner      Ducati    1:37.580  + 0.043
 3.  Nicky Hayden      Honda     1:37.816  + 0.279
 4.  Colin Edwards     Yamaha    1:38.020  + 0.483
 5.  John Hopkins      Suzuki    1:38.185  + 0.648
 6.  Makoto Tamada     Yamaha    1:38.192  + 0.655
 7.  Alex Barros       Ducati    1:38.238  + 0.701
 8.  Dani Pedrosa      Honda     1:38.299  + 0.762
 9.  Randy de Puniet   Kawasaki  1:38.474  + 0.937
10.  Loris Capirossi   Ducati    1:38.485  + 0.948
11.  Alex Hofmann      Ducati    1:38.723  + 1.186
12.  Carlos Checa      Honda     1:38.752  + 1.215
13.  Sylvain Guintoli  Yamaha    1:38.768  + 1.231
14.  Shinya Nakano     Honda     1:38.790  + 1.253
15.  Chris Vermeulen   Suzuki    1:38.900  + 1.363
16.  Anthony West      Kawasaki  1:39.562  + 2.025
17.  Marco Melandri    Honda     1:39.630  + 2.093
18.  Kurtis Roberts    KR        1:40.622  + 3.085