It only took a little while alvaro bautista in free practice Australia to get to the top of the ranking. the champion of superbike he set a 1:31.032 on lap six of the morning session to finish fastest in FP1. A record that in the afternoon dropped to 1:30.62 in the FP2 that allowed him to increase his advantage at the head of the combined.
second was Andrea Locatelli with the yamaha and third Iker Lecuona with the Sling, 0.446 and 0.506 respectively from the leader. It earned them both the time of FP1 and the time of the Spaniard was surprising, who before the free practice sessions did not seem very confident as seen in the pre-season tests. “We are going to the limit, I don’t know if we are prepared to compete,” he said then. A speech that has now turned to “there are good feelings, we are not that far away”. The man from Honda had the pleasure of seeing himself 0.097 behind Bautista in the morning and even tried to attack first place, he had been lowering times in the last moments, but a drag in 10 he left him in third place.
Behind the head trio Michael Ruben Rinaldi and Jonathan Rhea to complete the top-5. The Italian confirms with the Panigale his good pre-season sensations and can be seen from above, a place that the Northern Irishman is expected to have with the Ninja, who pointed out the high temperatures as a factor to take into account: “I felt very solid in the first session, our pace was Well. As soon as the temperature rose and I did my first start in FP2, I didn’t feel good on the bike at all. I had no grip. We tried a small configuration change to get back. We were trying something and were curious to go back and check our base configuration. Even with our base setup, it had no grip. We weren’t pushing the tire, the tire was not in the temperature or pressure range.
Something similar happened to razgatliogluwith the R1, much further, 10th and 0.937 behind the leader with grip problems on the rear end: “In the afternoon, it was incredibly hot. The asphalt was 51, 52 degrees. We tried a racing simulation. It seems like it wasn’t very fast, but it wasn’t bad either. We tried some new setups for the race. Tomorrow it seems that the weather will be cooler, which will help with grip”.
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In SuperSport the fastest of the day was Nicolo Bulega with the Ducati than in the FP2 pressed to unseat Stefano Manci with the yamaha of the Ten Kate Racingwho by 79. Promising start of Adrian Huertas with the Kawasaki, third of the day at 0.889. The man from Madrid was able to recover from an early crash in the 10th to mark the third time, while the other Spaniard in the category in the Australian event, Jorge Navarro, closed his debut with the Ten Kate in 14th position at 1,782.
