The wind had increased significantly by the beginning of RP3 and a lot of dust was being blown onto the Losail circuit, guaranteeing there would be no combined time improvements.
Tech 3 KTM rider Iker Lecuona set the early pace of the session with 1: 58.073 minutes before Quartararo continued his Yamaha with 1: 56.912 seconds.
The Frenchman was not happy with the feeling on his M1 on Friday in the lower grip conditions that a large part of the field had due to the humidity.
He further improved his pace to 1: 56.723 seconds, although Mir would drop him 10 minutes later with 1: 56.450 seconds on his Suzuki.
I blamed a strategy gaffe from his Suzuki team on Friday evening in FP2 for not making direct progress into the second quarter. The Spaniard had to go through the first quarter for the second week in a row today.
Mir’s time would remain the benchmark until the last three minutes when teammate Alex Rins moved up to the top of the ranking with 1: 56.347 minutes.
Rins seemed poised to finish third RP, leading a Suzuki 1-2, but Quartararo produced a 1: 56.064-second victory on death to end the session in the lead – despite Ducati’s Jack Miller thanks to his 1 : 53.145 seconds from the second RP remains the fastest in combined times.
The Suzuki duo rounded off the top three, Rins certainly with his FP2 performance in the second quarter, while Mir will join all four KTM riders, Honda’s Pol Espargaro and Valentino Rossi, later in the evening in the first quarter.
Danilo Petrucci finished fourth on his Tech 3 KTM but is only twelfth in combined times and heads into the second quarter, while fifth placed Maverick Vinales on the Yamaha will contest the second quarter.
Petronas SRT’s Franco Morbidelli, who finished sixth in RP III, will join Vinales in the second quarter. The remaining top 10 of the session – LCR’s Avintias Enea Bastianini, Alex Marquez, Rossi, and Espargaro – face the first quarter.
Francesco Bagnaia was the only factory Ducati rider to complete a few laps in RP3, the 14th Italian, while Miller, Pramac duo Johann Zarco and Jorge Martin and Avintia’s Luca Marini did not set any times.
All but Marini in this quartet secured their Q2 spots on Friday, with Aleix Espargaro (17th) from Aprilia and Stefan Bradl (16th) from Honda being the last of the direct participants in the pole shootout session.
Qualification for the Doha GP begins at 8 p.m. local time.