Wet conditions welcomed the WorldSBK riders for their First Practice at Magny-Cours as Kawasaki’s Jonathan Rea emerged on top in the morning session.
The second last round of the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship started on Friday morning at Magny-cours for the Pirelli French WorldSBK round and it was a completely captivating session which was topped by Jonathan Rea who is the current championship leader.
The 33-year-old Kawasaki rider was the last to head out to the track and put in very quick laps to subdue Ten Kate Racing Yamaha rider, Loriz Baz who was in the lead. With only thirty minutes to go, Rea went ahead to set a time of 1m 51.924s, which was over 1.5 seconds over Loriz Baz and BMW Motorrad’s Tom Sykes. The last 10 minutes to the conclusion of the session were spent by Rea to bring down the time benchmarks that Baz had made. Rea went ahead to be the only rider that made a lap time below the 1m 50s bracket.
Pata Yamaha’s Toprak Razgatlioglu managed to get the fourth place as he was continuously progressing in his lap times throughout the session. He was closely followed by Xavi Fores(Kawasaki Puccetti Racing) who had mentioned earlier in the week that he would not be remaining with the Kawasaki satellite team for the 2021 season. Alex lowes finished 6th as the second Kawasaki Factory rider after Rea.
Scott Redding(Ducatti ARUBA.IT Racing) who is a rookie managed to be the seventh fastest as he is contending for the world championship being second after Rea. Team Go Eleven’s Michael Reuben Rinaldi finished eighth despite a crash at Turn 15 late in the practice session. The ninth place was taken by Michael van der Mark(PATA Yamaha WorldSBK) although he experienced a mechanical issue at the end of the session. Team HRC’s Leon Haslam rounded up the top ten riders in the practice session.
Chaz Davies(Ducatti ARUBA.IT) finished all the way down at 16th place as the wet conditions proved to be very tough for him as Team HRC’s Alvaro Bautista finished all the way down at the 19th place. Federico Caricasulo on the GRT Yamaha had a very huge crash at the Adelaide Hairpin around Turn 5, the rider was however able to walk away from the incident as a red flag was brought out to give some time for his bike wreckage to be cleared from the track, the 24-year-old however ended up ranking 13th in the session. Samuele Cavalieri(Barni Racing Team) was also not spared by the wet conditions as he also crashed at Turn 2 with only 20 minutes to go to the conclusion of the session, the Italian however managed to rank 21st in the practice session.
