Marquez led the way from 10 minutes into the session and worked down to a 1m21.621s with his final lap.

Tech 3 Yamaha rider Smith leapt up into second place with three minutes remaining, following third-placed Andrea Iannone across the line.

The Briton ended up 0.119 seconds adrift of Marquez once the factory Honda man improved at the end.

Jorge Lorenzo took fourth, just three thousandths of a second ahead of Dani Pedrosa.

Aleix Espargaro was sixth on his Suzuki while championship leader Valentino Rossi could not improve upon his first-practice time and was seventh.

Scott Redding was maintaining his earlier form by moving into fourth place with six minutes left, but the Marc VDS Honda rider was eventually bumped down to eighth in front of Yonny Hernandez and Andrea Dovizioso.

A couple of the weekend’s replacement riders got into grief, with Marco Melandri’s Aprilla successor Michael Laverty ending his session 20 minutes early when he ran off track and could not restart while Hiroshi Aoyama – standing in for Karel Abraham – crashed out at the very end of the session.