Lowes controls Moto2™ Free Practice 3 in Qatar

Tight times in Moto2™ once again as Lowes leads FP3 from Luthi and Baldassarri, the Brit faster than his own Moto2™ lap record.

With just a single session on Friday, riders in the Moto2™ World Championship eagerly got to work in Free Practice 3. With both MotoGP™ and Moto3™ having run before them, track conditions were well suited for setting a fast lap, Tom Luthi (Garage Plus Interwetten) setting the provisional best time of the weekend on just his third lap.

This time wouldn’t stand for the entire session as Sam Lowes (Federal Oil Gresini Moto2) went under his own Circuit Best Lap with a 1’59.262, over a tenth faster than his 2015 pole time. Lowes has been strong in both testing and practice in Qatar, the Brit showing no ill effects of his two crashes on Thursday.

0.211s back on the Gresini rider was Tom Luthi, the Swiss rider’s early 1’59.473 good enough to hold him in second, both in the session and on combined times. Luthi has classically gone well at the Commercial Bank Grand Prix of Qatar with three podium finishes, two coming in 2014 and 2015.

Lorenzo Baldassarri (Forward Team) was also able to improve his best time from Friday to set a 1’59.517 and end only 0.255s off Lowes’ time. With 19 laps under his belt, the young Italian completed the second most laps of any rider in the third practice session.

Fourth in both FP3 and the combined times was Marcel Schrotter (AGR Team), the German able to improve his time by over half a second from Thursday. This put him ahead of fellow German Jonas Folger (Dynavolt Intact GP) who, although he was fifth in the session, was unable to improve his Thursday time which saw him finish fifth on combined times.

Alex Rins (Paginas Amarillas HP 40), Johann Zarco (Ajo Motorsport), Takaaki Nakagami (Idemitsu Honda Team Asia), Hafizh Syahrin (Petronas Raceline Malaysia) and Franco Morbidelli (Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS) rounded out the top ten, all under the 2’00 barrier.

The next time Moto2™ will be back on the Losail International Circuit will be at 18:55 Local Time on Saturday the 19th for Qualifying. With the pole record time already eclipsed, no doubt the 45-minute shootout will produce more thrilling times.