Coming out as the absolute winner of the first round of the Superbike Championship in Australia, Álvaro Bautista continued his momentum in Thailand by taking the best time in FP2 by 1 tenths on the Buriram circuit, in 1'33.089.
Behind him, we obviously found Jonathan Rea but also the 2 Yamahas of Michael Van der Mark et Marco Melandri.
In the afternoon, behind the 2 leaders who improved their times very slightly, Sandra Cortese et alex lowes came to reinforce the presence of Yamaha at the forefront which thus placed 4 motorcycles in the Top 6.
Alvaro Bautista: “Of course, it's only Friday, but I'm very happy because the most important thing was to confirm our potential on a track different from that of Australia. This morning I started to understand the track and its landmarks, which are a little different from those of MotoGP, so I needed a few laps to adapt my riding style. Then I worked on the bike settings without making any big changes, just a few adjustments for this track. In the afternoon we tried a different type of rear tire to see how the new tire behaved. There are positives and negatives, so we still have to make the decision for tomorrow's race. The feeling with the Panigale V4 R is good and I am satisfied with the result of this first day. »
In category Supersport, the first session saw a domination of the 4 Yamaha YZR R6s of Federico Caricasulo (1'37.923), Randy Krummenacher, Jules cluzel et Thomas Gradinger. Then came the 2 Kawasakis of the Japanese Hikari Okubo as well as Lucas Mahias. The first MV Agusta, that of Raffaele De Rosa, placed himself in 9th position, just ahead of the Estonian's Hondas Hannes Soomer and French Jules Danilo who preceded Loris Cresson.
The 2nd session was the opportunity to Jules cluzel to lower the benchmark in 1'37.641, ahead of 4 other Yamahas and the MV Agusta of Raffaele De Rosa, While Lucas Mahias still appeared to be struggling with a less competitive machine and had to settle for the 8th best time.
Jules Danilo placed his Honda in 11th position, 1,4 seconds behind the leader, while the Belgian Loris Cresson was positioned 13th, two places ahead Corentin Perolari, the other member of the GMT 94 team.
Jules cluzel : « I'm delighted because we took a step forward after Australia, an event in which we suffered somewhat. We scored 20 points, that's good, but we needed to improve. We achieved this during free practice. We must continue like this for the qualifications. Either way, I think we have the pace for the race. I'm happy with our setup. We haven't touched it too much. Tomorrow we will make some adjustments to it, but nothing crazy, because we have the pace. It's a circuit that has a lot of hard braking, which is something I like. I'm always fast here and the important thing will be to score a lot of points on Sunday. »
