Toprak Razgatlioglu opened up proceedings on top in first free practice for Round 7 of the 2023 WorldSBK Championship at Imola, Italy.

This weekend sees a return to the Emilia-Romagna venue, with FP1 marking the circuit’s first WorldSBK session since 2019.

It means a sizeable proportion of the riders taking part this weekend have either never competed at Imola before, or at least experienced it on Superbike machinery.

For Razgatlioglu, he does have experience of Imola, though this will be his first time competing on the Pata Yamaha R1 having previously raced the Puccetti Kawasaki back in 2019 during the formative of his Superbike career.

Nevertheless, he was the rider to beat throughout the 45mins session, coming away with the fastest time of 1m 47.661secs. That was just enough to put him a mere 0.003secs ahead of Jonathan Rea, the Ulsterman hoping to benefit from the extra 250rpm he can utilise on the Kawasaki ZX-10RR following a balance of performance adjustment.

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By contrast, runaway championship leader Alvaro Bautista spent the session adjusting to having 250rpm fewer revs to play with as the governing body look to clip some of Ducati’s performance advantage in WorldSBK right now.

The Spaniard turned in the third best time, with Aruba.it team-mate Michael Ruben Rinaldi coming in right behind him in fourth. Fellow Panigale V4 R riders Axel Bassani on the Motocorsa machine and Danilo Petrucci on the Barni Spark bike slotted into fifth and sixth to suggest the tweaks won’t be too detrimental at Imola.

Andrea Locatelli and Alex Lowes followed up in seventh and eighth, with Garrett Gerloff leading the BMW challenge in ninth on the Bonovo machine. He was just ahead of the firm’s two factory ROKiT M 1000 RRs, Scott Redding leading new team-mate Leon Haslam, the experienced BSB favourite settling in well to his new surroundings with the 11th fastest time.

Bradley Ray enjoyed a strong start to the day with his run to 12th fastest on the Motoxracing Yamaha, which was faster than two other Yamaha riders trying Imola for the first time, Remy Gardner and Dominique Aegerter.

WorldSBK Imola | Free Practice 1 Results