Toprak Razgatlioglu dominates the opening practice in San Juan

Toprak Razgatlioglu dominated after taking the lead from the beginning to the end of the first practice for the Argentine WorldSBK round in San Juan.

Jonathan Rea initially led Razgatlioglu by seven-tenths during FP1, but fell to second as the reigning world champion started to find his groove.

Razgatlioglu improved his position at the top of the standings by seven tenths with a timing of 1:38.404 seconds. The Yamaha rider’s time made him the first rider to record a lap that was under 1 minute and 39 seconds, as everyone else found it difficult to do so.

Rea managed to pass the Turkish racer by four tenths on his fifth flying lap, but when Razgatlioglu came very near to establishing a 1m 37s time, the gap between the top two widened to +0.446s.

Alvaro Bautista eventually joined the top five fight as he went fourth quickest, just over half a second behind Razgatlioglu, who maintained four-tenths of a second ahead of Alex Lowes with half the session left. He had been slow to catch up to his two title rivals.

Rea moved back in front of his teammate at the start of his second run, but the six-time WorldSBK champion was still more over four tenths behind Razgatlioglu.

2022 WORLD SUPERBIKE SAN JUAN, ARGENTINA FREE PRACTICE 1 RESULTS