The miserably wet conditions on Friday gave way to bright sunshine for the third 45-minute training session of the Misano weekend.
As a result, improvements in combined times occurred almost immediately, with Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaro being the first significant improvement in fourth.
After the first 10 minutes of the session, Bagnaia, the winner of the Aragon race, was the fastest in the combined order with a time of 1: 32.489 minutes
More than half of the field had won the combined classification after 10 minutes of the race, with leader Fabio Quartararo being Bagnaia’s next challenger 0.105 seconds back in the beginning.
25 minutes before the end of the session, Friday pacesetter Maverick Vinales proved that his form on the Aprilia was no accident when he moved back to the top of the stack with 1: 32.200 minutes.
This should be the benchmark for the next 15 minutes before Quartararo drove the first lap under 1:32 of the weekend with 1: 31.975 minutes to drop his former Yamaha team-mate Vinales.
When the field was pressing for lap times in FP3, the track bit several of them, with Valentino Rossi slipping quickly on his Petronas SRT Yamaha in the right-hand corner of Turn 13 with 25 minutes to go.
Honda Wildcard Stefan Bradl and KTM’s Miguel Oliveira would also suffer front-end crashes at slow speed in the Carro hairpin in Turn 14 and in the Tramonto directly in Turn 10 in the final stages.
And just over two minutes from time, Marc Marquez crashed for the 19th time this season at Carro’s while he was pushing for the top 10 and was unable to get his Honda to work.
This led the six-time MotoGP World Champion to make a Q1 appearance in qualifying later that afternoon, earning him an uninvited 15 extra minutes on a physical track on his right shoulder.
Shortly before Marquez crashed, Bagnaia established himself again at the top of the timesheet with 1: 31.936 minutes, which would go undisputed to the checkered flag.
Quartararo shaded the Ducati rider by 0.039 seconds while Jack Miller is third on the second works team Ducati.
Reigning world champion Joan Mir was top Suzuki driver in fourth place ahead of Vinales, the only Aprilia to have entered Q2 so far after teammate Alex Espargaro canceled a late top 8 round for violating the yellow flag.
Alex Rins made sure that both Suzukis will go into Q2, with Pramacs Johann Zarco, Hondas Pol Espargaro, Pramacs Jorge Martin and Ducati wildcard Michele Pirro – who benefited from Aleix Espargaro’s canceled lap – completing the top 10.
LCR’s Takaaki Nakagami was just 0.049 seconds behind a direct Q2 spot in 11th place and will later face Q1 with players like Bradl, Marc Marquez, Yamaha’s Franco Morbidelli and Aleix Espargaro.
All KTM riders continued to struggle at Misano, with Brad Binder being the brand’s leading rider in 17th place – albeit just 1.096 seconds behind the pace.
He led Tech 3’s Iker Lecuona, who crashed late, while Miguel Oliveira on the second works team KTM and Danilo Petrucci’s sister Tech 3 KTM – who also had a late crash – took the last places.
The returning Andrea Dovizioso was only 21st on the timesheet, but the Petronas SRT driver found 2.2 seconds in his best lap from Friday’s only dry run in FP1.
Misano MotoGP – FP3 Results