Alvaro Bautista overcame a low key start to Round 10 of the 2023 WorldSBK Championship at Motorland Aragon to end the first day of free practice atop the timesheets.

The champion-elect comes into his home event clasping a comfortable 57 point lead over Toprak Razgatlioglu in the overall standings with three events and nine races remaining.

Moreover, the odds are stacked largely in Bautista’s favour at Aragon especially with the Ducati Panigale V4 R enjoying a particularly strong record at the Alcaniz venue, while Razgatlioglu has often identified it as his weakest circuit.

It’s a trend that played to form come the end of Friday free practice as Bautista bounced to the summit of the combined order with a best of 1m 49.649secs, proving just under a tenth quicker than Michael Ruben Rinaldi.

The Italian, who achieved his first-ever WorldSBK win at Aragon aboard the Go Eleven Ducati in 2019, looked in good shape once again as he pitches to teams for a 2024 WorldSBK ride having been axed from the Aruba Ducati line-up.

Danilo Petrucci continued the Ducati theme up top aboard the satellite Barni machine with the third best time, two tenths off Bautista, while Jonathan Rea - fastest in FP1 - was fourth quickest as the only other rider to dip below 1m 50secs.

Despite a fall late on in FP2, Iker Lecuona ended a positive Friday with the fifth quickest time of the day, just ahead of Bonovo BMW’s Garrett Gerloff, the American far and away the best of the M 1000 RR contingent compared with team-mates Loris Baz, Michael van der Mark and Scott Redding in 13th, 14th and 15th respectively.

Yamaha found itself in the unusual position of being the slowest of the five manufacturers with Razgatlioglu it’s best-placed representative in seventh, though he was followed closely by Dominique Aegerter and Andrea Locatelli in eighth and ninth. Xavi Vierge completed the top ten.