Kawasaki’s Tom Sykes opened up the Rimini World Superbike weekend with the fastest time of the first free practice session, the Yorkshireman edging team-mate Jonathan Rea by just half a tenth of a second.
Conditions were near perfect for the first hour-long session of the seventh round of the 2017 season. With testing mileage under their belts already at Misano, it was straight down to business for the WorldSBK field.
After Donington, Sykes felt he was edging closer to where he wants to be with the 2017 ZX-10RR and made that clear by hitting the top of the timesheets in the early stages of first practice.
The British rider chipped away at his lap time, eventually raising the bar to 1m34.931s, though this was just 0.052 seconds quicker than championship leader Rea’s best effort.
Rea, who comes into this weekend’s action 55 points clear of Sykes in the standings, spent the opening 20 minutes of the session in his garage with a technical issue. Once back out on track, the Kawasaki rider was immediately on the pace.
Ducati’s Marc Melandri completed the top three with a late effort of 1m35.151s, with team-mate Chaz Davies a tenth adrift in fourth spot. Leon Camier rounded out the top five on his MV Agusta, the Briton enjoying a rare trouble-free session.
Barni Racing’s Xavi Fores was sixth quickest on his customer Panigale, with Althea BMW’s Jordi Torres seventh as he seeks for a strong result this weekend at the team’s home round.
Friday morning will be one Yamaha will be keen to forget. Michael van der Mark suffered a late technical issue and had to stop on track, the Dutchman unable to improve on eighth place as a result.
Team-mate Alex Lowes fell from his YZF-R1 in the opening stages of the session at Turn 8, and did so again on his final run at Turn 5. To add insult to injury, he was knocked out of the top 10 by just 0.001s, and with track temperatures set to rise this afternoon lap time improvements may be hard to come by.
It was the sister Althea S1000RR of Raffaele De Rosa who leaped up into 10th spot ahead of Lowes, the San Marino rider a few tenths further adrift of Milwaukee Aprilia’s Eugene Laverty.
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