Pata Yamaha’s Toprak Razgatlioglu claimed a rather sedate second WorldSBK practice at Navarra with a 1’38.134 from Ducati’s Scott Redding on Friday afternoon.
Working on race pace rather than outright times, the majority of riders failed to improve on their opening efforts throughout FP2 with Jonathan Rea’s morning best remaining top in the overall standings.
The afternoon action began with Redding at the top before Razgatlioglu took control on a 1’38.134 - half a second down on the morning’s best after the opening 10-minutes.
Andrea Locatelli split the battling pair with his fifth lap of the second free practice, three-tenths adrift of his Pata Yamaha teammate while GRT’s Garrett Gerloff claimed a strong fourth.
An all British trio of Tom Sykes, Alex Lowes and Chaz Davies locked out the next of the front running positions while Michael Ruben Rinaldi, Rea and Michael van der Mark held off Leon Haslam at the edge of the top-10. The mid-session allowing the pack to concentrate on race set-up rather than hot-laps as the preparation for Saturday’s opening contest continued.
Turn four caught out Gerloff with 17-minutes to run, the GRT R1 barreling through the gravel on the American’s 12th lap of the final 45-minute session.
Rea was on the move in the closing 15-minutes, finding seventh and looking to advance further before returning to the pits ahead of the final push. Rinaldi and Axel Bassani bettered the KRT man as the first hot-laps came in and he was dropped to ninth but the fight back wasn’t far away. His first flying lap promoted him to fifth before a mistake at turn nine disrupted the P3-effort next time around. Rinaldi making his Ducati work as he too improved to the top-three.
A technical issue saw Redding’s session end just ahead of the chequered flag as he pulled his stricken Panigale into the pits, from second in the standings, Razgatlioglu completing the session by retaining control with his opening effort.
Rinaldi and Locatelli sat best of the rest as Friday drew to a close, Gerloff maintaining his top-five position from the British onslaught as Davies headed Rea, Lowes and Sykes with axel Bassani rounding out the top-10.
