Bautista bolts clear early at Aragon
Alvaro Bautista gives out an early warning to his World Superbike rivals by going over one second clear
Full FP1 World Superbike results at Aragon
Alvaro Bautista has sent out an early warning to his World Superbike rivals by going over one second clear of nearest challengers Alex Lowes and Jonathan Rea.
Bautista, who has a 100% winning start to his World Superbike career having claimed two hat-tricks in Australia and Thailand, produced blitzing pace at the end of the opening practice session to pull 1.127s ahead of Lowes.
The Aruba.it Racing Ducati is already edging towards lap record pace with his best lap of 1m 49.692s with the new V4 R which puts him inside four-tenths of a second of the lap record at the Spanish track set by Chaz Davies on the previous Panigale V-twin model.
Lowes impressed despite the pace deficit to the World Superbike championship leader with second spot for Pata Yamaha ahead of Kawasaki’s Rea by 0.022s, while Bautista’s team-mate Chaz Davies showed promising signs of pace in fourth place and within one-tenth of Lowes having struggled at the start of the season at the flyaway rounds.
Leon Haslam also kept within touching distance of Lowes in fifth place for Kawasaki ahead of Eugene Laverty on the Team Go Eleven Ducati.
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Tom Sykes leads the BMW charge in seventh place, two-tenths back from Laverty, as Pata Yamaha’s Alex Lowes and GRT Yamaha’s Sandro Cortese rounded out the top 10.
Local rider Jordi Torres made strong late gains to surge to 11th place for Pedercini Kawasaki ahead of fellow independent Kawasakis Toprak Razgatlioglu on the Puccetti, split by BMW’s Markus Reiterberger, and Leandro Mercado on the Orelac Racing machine.
Marco Melandri had a tame start to his race weekend down in 14th place for GRT Yamaha only ahead of Michael Ruben Rinaldi (Barni Ducati) and the Hondas.
It was a difficult FP1 for all Honda riders with Leon Camier, battling a knee injury sustained in Thailand, in 16th place but 3.8 seconds off Bautista’s leading time. The British rider did beat Moriwaki-Althea Honda team-mate Ryuichi Kiyonari, who is making his competitive debut at Aragon this weekend, with Alessandro Delbianco rounding out the runners for Althea Honda.
