WSBK Portimao Superbike FP3: Alvaro Bautista breaks the record, he is the magician of the roller coaster!

In la troisième et latest meeting, le pilot Ducati Alvaro Bautista pulverizes le record de Portimao. Jonathan Rea and Toprak Razgatlioglu wonder how can they beat this madman?

About Paolo Gozzi / Corsedimoto.com

Alvaro Bautista is rewriting the pages of Superbike. During the third and final practice session at Portimao, he smashed the circuit record, in 1'39.811, a tenth less than the benchmark of Jonathan Rhea in Superpole last year. And be careful: this time, the ultra-soft tire is not available, and the Ducatista therefore took to the SCX, the same solution with which he completed the eighteen laps of Sunday's long race last at Motorland Aragon!

Rea and Toprak far away, but….
The third session, with much cooler asphalt (23°C) than that which the drivers will find in the afternoon in race 1 (40-45°C expected), gave rise to an unreliable classification, as the drivers went wild at the end of the session in search of the all-or-nothing lap on fresh rubber. Jonathan Rhea et Toprak Razgatlioglu, on the other hand, worked for the entire duration of the session (30 minutes) to try to find the essentials for the long distance. The position is misleading: Rea is 14th in front of his friend and opponent.

“Maybe if I stay with Bautista…” hopes the Turk, the only one who can delay the Ducati world championship celebration. It is certain that both drivers will be up to the challenge, but it is not certain that they can contain Bautista's supremacy.

Moreover, the Panigale V4 R also flies with Michael Rinaldi, and we can expect that Danilo Petrucci also approaches places on the podium when necessary. For those who don't ride a Ducati, it will be a weekend full of thoughts...

Watch out for the Superpole
The Portuguese weekend is in full swing with the Superpole which will define the starting grid for Race 1 and the Superpole Race on Sunday morning. Here are all the weekend schedules. Remember that the Superpole record belongs to Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki) which last year had a time of 1'39.916 here. This record can only fall, given what happened during this third session. This time around, however, Pirelli's ultra-soft SCQ tire is not available, and for qualifying, drivers will have the SCX at their disposal as their softest tire.

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Paolo Gozzi