Bautista strikes back against Rea, Haslam

Full FP2 results from Phillip Island

Alvaro Bautista has ended Friday practice fastest ahead of his World Superbike debut with the Aruba.it Racing Ducati rider seeing off both factory Kawasaki riders Jonathan Rea and Leon Haslam.

After reigning World Superbike champion Rea topped the morning session, Bautista upped his pace towards the end of FP2 to reclaim top spot having taken a clean sweep of the test session times at Phillip Island earlier this week.

Bautista ended the session with the fastest lap time of 1m 30.327s to edge out Rea by just 0.040s with Haslam in third having briefly held top spot with his 1m 30.482s.

Pata Yamaha’s Alex Lowes returned to the sharp end after a low-key FP1 to end the afternoon practice fourth fastest despite a small off at Turn 6 early into the session.

Leon Camier continued to show encouraging signs for the new Moriwaki Althea Honda squad by taking fifth place in FP2, albeit almost half a second off pace-setter Bautista, with Michael van der Mark in sixth place for Pata Yamaha.

Toprak Razgatlioglu also surged up the times to take seventh place for Turkish Puccetti Kawasaki in FP2 ahead of fellow independent favourite Michael Ruben Rinaldi on the Barni Ducati as experienced duo Marco Meldandri (GRT Yamaha) and Tom Sykes (BMW) rounded out the top ten.

Rookie Sandro Cortese was pushed down to 11th but remained ahead of Eugene Laverty who continued to find pace on the Go Eleven Ducati.

Factory Ducati rider Chaz Davies remained a step off the pace in 13th place, having had his pre-season progress hampered by back pain, with Leandro Mercado (Orelac Racing VerdNatura Kawasaki) and Markus Reiterberger (BMW) completing the top 15.