Championship leader Marc Marquez topped MotoGP FP3 at Phillip Island by a dominant margin but also suffered a late crash.
That incident meant he was unable to take advantage as a racing line started to emerge, although Marquez still ended up beating Johann Zarco.
Marquez set a best time of 1min38.522s on his ninth of 12 completed laps but hit the deck when his front wheel slipped out from under him at Turn 6.
At the time of the crash he was leading the session by an impressive 0.834-seconds, but a late improvement from Zarco meant the Tech3 rider vaulted up the order and got within half a second of the top.
Earlier, Zarco had led the session but crashed coming out of downhill right-hand Turn 10 before getting back to the pits and grabbing his spare bike to turn his fastest times.
Andrea Iannone crashed his Suzuki on the exit of Turn 4, but is safely through to Q2, as no rider’s best lap time came close to eclipsing the quickest efforts from the dry FP2 session yesterday.
Late in the session, Ducati’s Jorge Lorenzo had a fast shunt on Turn 8 when he clipped the inside curb with his front wheel and lost grip on the paint.
He will have to go through Q1 in qualifying having not been fast enough in the dry yesterday.
The same applies to Valentino Rossi, who edged his works Yamaha team-mate Maverick Vinales – who is through to Q2 – to 12th place in the Saturday morning session.
Late improvements on the drying track from KTM’s Pol Espargaro and Aspar Ducati rider Karel Abraham meant they jumped to third and fourth fastest, but while Espargaro is through to Q2, Abraham is not.
Neither is Danilo Petrucci, despite him playing his usual starring role in the wet and clocking fifth in the FP3 standings.
Dani Pedrosa on the second works Honda, Cal Crutchlow on the LCR Honda machine and Andrea Dovizioso were P6 through P8 in FP3, and are already into Q2.
Local boy Jack Miller is another in Q2 but also fast in the wet, and he finished FP3 in 10th.
Aleix Espargaro completed the fewest laps – just seven – and wound up 23rd and last, but his fastest time from yesterday has booked him his place in Q2.