Bautista fastest on opening day of Phillip Island test

Phillip Island World Superbike Monday test times

World Superbike debutant Alvaro Bautista has topped both test sessions on the opening day of the Phillip Island test ahead of the 2019 season opener.

With track time split between the Superbike and World Supersport categories, Bautista set the standard to beat in the first session with a 1m 30.743s, under the fastest race lap set at the track 12 months ago, to impress ahead of his debut in the championship.

The Aruba.it Racing Ducati rider saw off a challenge from Pata Yamaha’s Alex Lowes who claimed second spot overall with a 1m 31.146s, fractionally ahead of reigning World Superbike champion Jonathan Rea in third place for the factory Kawasaki squad.

Tom Sykes rose to fourth place overall by bettering his fastest lap in the second session with a 1m 31.300s on the new BMW Motorrad WorldSBK machine, while his Kawasaki replacement Leon Haslam also rose up to fifth on the combined times in the afternoon.

That saw Marco Melandri, the double race-winner at Phillip Island last year, shuffled to sixth place on the GRT Yamaha with Michael van der Mark seventh for Pata Yamaha.

Sandro Cortese rounded out an impressive early showing from the Yamaha riders with eighth place and in front of fellow German rider Markus Reiterberger on the BMW as Turkish Puccetti Kawasaki’s Toprak Razgatlioglu rounded out the top 10.

Leon Camier led the new Moriwaki Althea Honda charge, in the team’s first public test this winter, with 11th place and 1.7s off pace-setter Bautista on the combined times with team-mate Ryuichi Kiyonari ending the day 16th overall.