Razgatlioglu holds off Davies to top first day of 2021 WorldSBK season

The 2021 WorldSBK Championship is officially underway after a length off-season with Toprak Razgatlioglu topping the timesheets at the end of Friday’s two sessions from Motorland Aragon.

Six months have passed since WorldSBK last went green in Estoril, but the first competitive day of the year was very familiar to most since the Alcaniz circuit hosted a large portion of extended pre-season testing.

Even so, Yamaha will be encouraged to see Razgatlioglu top, as well as Garrett Gerloff in third overall given the R1 package struggled versus Kawasaki and Ducati in last year’s two events held there.

Splitting the Yamahas was Chaz Davies, who enjoyed a confidence boosting first day back in action on the GoEleven Ducati, comfortably quicker than his former factory team-mate Scott Redding in event and his successor on the Panigale V4 R, Michael Ruben Rinaldi in sixth.

Alex Lowes was the fastest Kawasaki rider in fourth, just ahead of team-mate Jonathan Rea, who heads into this weekend bidding to reach a ‘ton’ of wins (100).

Coming into the year as the two manufacturers with the most ground to make up, it was a modest opening day for Honda and BMW.

Honda squeezed into the top ten with eighth (Alvaro Bautista) and tenth (Leon Haslam) and tenth, while Tom Sykes split the pair in ninth.

New team-mate Michael van der Mark endured a first day to forget with a huge crash that destroyed his brand-new BMW M1000RR and ruled him out for much of the day.

Elsewhere, Axel Bassani was an impressive tenth as the best of the five WorldSSP graduating rookies, while ex-MotoGP rider Tito Rabat was just behind him in 13th

WorldSBK Aragon - FP1 & FP2 Results [Combined] - Round 1/13