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MotoGP Qatar: Crutchlow chases Marquez in third session

Britain’s Cal Crutchlow was less than a tenth slower than reigning MotoGP World Champion Marc Marquez in today’s crucial third free practice session and easily booked his place in tomorrow’s second qualifying.

The Isle of Man resident put in a 1’54.918 on his last fast lap, just 0.096 slower than the factory Repsol Honda rider, himself only managing to improve on his best from earlier by fractions of a second, and Crutchlow only lost top spot in the last sector.

“Obviously I’m happy enough with the lap time tonight and how things were feeling at the end of the session, but the early part of it was a bit of a disaster. There was a strange feeling with the bike and I was riding around in 18th spot, with the rear not working as it had in the earlier practices. I think we’re on a bit of a different plan to the other guys tyre-wise, so maybe that was why the track felt a lot worse later on,” said Crutchlow.

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“The whole CWM LCR Honda Team are doing a great job though, and we are all working so hard. I’m not sure today’s speed and lap-times are relative to where we will finish the race, but I hope it is! We’re working hard enough, and I’m surprised with how fast we are going with the package we’ve got, but we still need to improve our lap by lap pace and we will be trying to do so overnight.”

Andrea Iannone finished third on the soft tyre with a 1’54.992 and promptly crashed at turn two. Aleix Espargaro leapt into fourth place using his soft tyre, lapping in 1’54.994 to edge out Dani Pedrosa by 0.30s.

Andrea Dovizioso hopped into sixth late on and demoted the satellite Ducati of Yonny Hernandez, who had used his soft tyre to lift himself into the middle part of the top ten.

It looked to be bad news for the Movistar Yamahas as both Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo only scraped into qualifying two but The Doctor and his crew were all smiles in the garage after the session despite finishing in ninth place.

Lorenzo had spent most of the session on the hard tyre, looking at his options for the race on Sunday evening while Rossi switching between the two for the same purpose.

Pol Espargaro was the last rider to automatically go through to qualifying two, ending in tenth place. A last ditch attempt by Britain’s Scott Redding saw him move into 12th place just behind Hector Barbera and only six-tenths off the pace.

Maverick Vinales also looked like he could have caused the works Yamahas some problems but just lost his pace through the last sector and ended in 13th place.

It was something of a disaster for Bradley Smith as he finished way down in 16th place and just over a second off the pace but complained of a tyre issue on his last run. Eugene Laverty ended in 19th place but cut his gap to Marquez to only a second.

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Session fastest lap sequence

4’14.980 38 Bradley SMITH GBR YAMAHA 1’57.159 165.3 2
4’32.979 9 Danilo PETRUCCI ITA DUCATI 1’56.158 166.7 2
4’49.581 4 Andrea DOVIZIOSO ITA DUCATI 1’55.979 166.9 2
6’44.927 46 Valentino ROSSI ITA YAMAHA 1’55.939 167.0 3
6’45.176 4 Andrea DOVIZIOSO ITA DUCATI 1’55.595 167.5 3
6’48.927 29 Andrea IANNONE ITA DUCATI 1’54.992 168.4 3
42’02.892 93 Marc MARQUEZ SPA HONDA 1’54.937 168.5 14
42’11.503 35 Cal CRUTCHLOW GBR HONDA 1’54.918 168.5 14
43’57.714 93 Marc MARQUEZ SPA HONDA 1’54.822 168.6 15

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