Sykes keeps pressure on Bautista in warm-up

Full warm-up World Superbike results from Aragon

Tom Sykes has produced a final-lap effort to keep within a quarter of a second of runaway leader Alvaro Bautista during warm-up at Aragon.

The race one winner grabbed top spot from Alex Lowes and rarely looked troubled in the short 15-minute session, in a copy to his domination in the opener, but BMW’s Sykes produced a late lap of 1m 50.828s to go 0.234s off the Spaniard’s leading time.

That pushed Lowes back into third place for Pata Yamaha as he looks to break on to the podium having narrowly missed out in race one following a late fade in tyre grip.

While Sykes would also have aspirations to reach the Aragon rostrum this weekend, his BMW is still being heavily hampered by the lack of top speed from its lower-specification engine. The British rider, and team-mate Markus Reiterberger, are continuing to lose around four-tenths of a second to pace-setter Bautista in the final sector which includes the long back straight.

Leon Haslam enjoyed a brighter start to his day after a disastrous opening race down in ninth place, blaming his choice of harder front tyre, as he led the Kawasaki charge in fourth place ahead of Reiterberger.

Michael van der Mark claimed sixth place ahead of reigning World Superbike champion Jonathan Rea who had a low-key warm-up.

GRT Yamaha’s Sandro Cortese ended the session eighth fastest just in front of Team Go Eleven Ducati’s Eugene Laverty, looking to bounce back from his frustrating off fighting for the podium on the final lap of the opening race, as Chaz Davies rounded out the top 10 on the factory Ducati.

Michael Ruben Rinaldi was duly edged out in 11th on the Barni Ducati, ahead of Jordi Torres on the Pedercini Kawasaki and Toprak Razgatlioglu on the Puccetti Kawasaki, as the trio of Hondas continued to round out the runners with Leon Camier ahead of team-mate Ryuichi Kiyonari and Althea’s Alessandro Delbianco.

Leandro Mercado sat out warm-up for Orelac Kawasaki following an injury sustained in a Lap 1 crash in yesterday’s opener.