It proved to be a day where riders were separated by the finest of margins at MotorLand Aragon, where PETRONAS Yamaha Sepang Racing Team’s Valentino Rossi ended qualifying for the Gran Premio de Aragon in 21st, while Jake Dixon will start his second MotoGP race one place behind in 22nd.
Rossi spent the first part of FP3 on the medium tyres, before completing his flying laps in the closing stages of the session. The Italian held a top-ten place momentarily, but ultimately his 1min 47.551secs lap saw him end FP3 15th. The start of Q1 saw Valentino sit as high as fourth on the timing screens, before falling two places at the end of his first run. Although he was able to improve his time to 1min 47.863secs, the ultra competitive session made this the 11th fastest time – which translates to 21st on the grid.
Also opting to wait until late on in FP3 to do his time attack, Dixon immediately improved upon his time from yesterday by over 1.5secs to set a 1min 48.422secs lap. Unable to improve this further, he ended FP3 22nd. The Brit had a strong start to Qualifying, posting a time that momentarily placed him as high as sixth. In his last flying lap of Q1 Jake posted a 1min 48.146secs lap time, which will see him start tomorrow’s race from 22nd – having ended Q1 12th.
Rossi and Dixon will return to the track at 9.40am local time (3.40pm MYT) for Warm Up, with the Gran Premio de Aragon coming to a close with the 23-lap MotoGP race at 2pm local time (8pm MYT).