Viñales, Pedrosa and Márquez the fastest in the GP Portugal FP3

With a dry track after a Friday in which riders could only ride with some water on the track, the first free practice sessions of Saturday at the Estoril circuit took place this morning. The fastest in each category were Viñales in Moto3, Pedrosa in MotoGP and Márquez in Moto2.

The Moto3 riders were the first to go out on track and were the ones who felt the cold track conditions more than anyone. They started taking it easy, gradually lowering their times as conditions improved. The best time went to Maverick Viñales with 1:47.492.

Behind the rider from Roses came the German Sandro Cortese, 0.189 behind. Third was the local rider Miguel Oliveira, who, on the Suter Honda of Alzamora, fought constantly for the best time but ultimately finished just over half a second off.

The positions of the Spanish riders were as follows: 1st Maverick Viñales, 5th Luis Salom, 6th Alberto Moncayo, 11th Alex Márquez, 13th Joan Olive, 15th Alex Rins, 18th Héctor Faubel, 19th Efrén Vázquez, 23rd Iván Moreno, 24th Isaac Viñales and 26th Adrián Martín.

In the premier class, the fastest was Dani Pedrosa, who from the start was close to the best times, always battling with his teammate Casey Stoner, who in the end had to settle for second place. Dani’s time was 1:37.326, beating Stoner’s time by just 12 thousandths. Lorenzo was third, a little over three tenths behind Dani.

Furthermore, Dani set his time on his second bike, since halfway through the session he had to park his Honda due to an electronic problem, though nothing serious. The Spanish results were as follows: 1st Dani Pedrosa, 3rd Jorge Lorenzo, 6th Álvaro Bautista, 11th Héctor Barberá, 13th Aleix Espargaró and 18th Iván Silva.

And in the Moto2 class, we saw a great Marc Márquez, who with a superb time of 1:41.041 dominated practically the entire session. We also saw many riders improve in the final minutes as the track temperature kept rising. Behind Luthi and Redding finished.

It was a great session for most of the Spanish riders, as we saw for much of the session that the top three were all Spanish, with Simón among the fastest. In the end the results were: 1st Marc Márquez, 4th Pol Espargaró, 5th Julián Simón, 8th Nico Terol, 12th Tito Rabat, 15th Toni Elías, 18th Ricky Cardús, 23rd Axel Pons, 30th Ángel Rodríguez and 31st Elena Rosell.

Photos | motogp.com