Toprak Razgatlioglu began his final weekend as a Yamaha rider in fine fettle by topping the timesheets on a weather and incident-affected first day of free practice at Jerez.

After joining the vast majority of his peers by sitting on a damp and murky FP1 in favour of waiting for the forecast sun and warmth of FP2, Razgatlioglu hit the front with a best time of 1m 40.312secs.

It placed him a clear two tenths clear of fellow R1 rider Remy Gardner in a session largely dominated by a battle for supremacy between the Yamaha and Ducati contingent.

Fresh from a season’s best finish of fourth last time out in Portimao, Gardner looked strong again on the satellite GYTR GRT Yamaha, just ahead of champion-elect Alvaro Bautista, whose anticipated coronation weekend started solidly in third despite a tip-off at Turn 6. 

The Aruba.it Ducati needs just two points from any one of this weekend’s three races to be crowned champion for a second successive year.

Team-mate Michael Ruben Rinaldi followed up in fourth place, ahead of Dominique Aegerter on the second of the GYTR GRT Yamahas and Philipp Oettl, the German looking strong in his final weekend for Go Eleven Ducati before he is replaced by Andrea Iannone.

One of the stars from the latter portion of the season, Garrett Gerloff continued his form on the Bonovo Action BMW to break the Yamaha/Ducati deadlock in seventh ahead of Danilo Petrucci and Andrea Locatelli, while Scott Redding rounded out the top ten.

It was a modest start to the weekend for Kawasaki with Jonathan Rea - in his final appearance for Team Green - only 13th best, while Alex Lowes could only manage 16th himself after taking a fall at Turn 1.

Elsewhere, Floran Alt is making an appearance this weekend as a wildcard reward for winning the 2023 IDM Superbike series on the Holzhauer Honda, while Leandro Mercado is also back in action and even topped the sparsely participated FP1 session on the Petronas MIE Honda.