Kawasaki’s Tom Sykes and Ducati’s Chaz Davies were on lap record pace during the second World Superbike free practice session at Laguna Seca. The reigning champ ended the outing with a 1’23.462 – going two tenths faster than the experienced Welshman.

Aprilia’s Marco Melandri edged ahead of his team-mate, Sylvain Guintoli to take third on the timesheets, with Voltcom Suzuki’s Eugene Laverty improving on his best lap from FP1 by over half a second, to round up the top five.

At the start it was Sykes who was the first rider to overtake the benchmark set by Guintoli in the first free practice session. The Yorkshireman lapped an impressive 1’23.462, going four tenths faster than the Aprilia rider with 35 minutes remaining to the second outing of the day.

Melandri slowly began to use his previous MotoGP and World Superbike experience to his advantage and on the 26 minute mark lapped a 1’23.745 to go second quickest, but once again his former BMW team-mate,  Davies went one tenth faster, using all his prior AMA experience to go into second on the sheets.

When the chequered flag appeared the Pata Honda duo of Jonathan Rea and Leon Haslam ended the session in seventh and ninth respectively, with the Northern Irishman posting a1’24.314, which is not too shabby for a Laguna Seca rookie. Kawasaki’s Loris Baz completed the top ten.

Voltcom Suzuki’s Alex Lowes was another rider who was tackling the circuit for the first time, but the Brit wasn’t able to improve on his best lap of 1’24.906 from the first free practice, and slipped to 11th in the combined times.

Christian Iddon, on his Alstare backed Bimota BB3 Evo machine ended the session in 15th going nearly one second quicker, with a 1’25.606. Reparto Corse’s stand-in rider, Leon Camier improved the most - and knocked three seconds off his time from FP1 to go up to 20th overall.