The French driver set the best time in the second free practice session of the day, ahead of Dominique Aegerter and Niki Tuuli. Steven Odendaal, for his part, could not do better than ninth.
The activity continued on track late in the afternoon on the Portimão track, in Portugal, as part of the second free practice session of the day in the Supersport category. After FP1 where Manuel González and Jules Cluzel had already headlined, the two men did it again at the end of the day.
And this time, it was the Frenchman who had the last word. The GMT94 driver had already come close to setting the reference time in the morning, beaten to the wire by the young Spanish driver. One thing is certain, the Auvergne recovered well from his injury in France at the beginning of September, although we will still have to see if he can hold the rope over the entire distance of a race.
In the meantime, the Auvergne showed himself to be uncompromising in the afternoon, setting the best time in 1'44.497, a margin of just under a tenth over his closest pursuer, who is none other this time only Dominique Aegerter, and held first place for most of the session.
🙌 Back on top! @JulesCluzel16 sets the fastest time of FP2 with 1:44.497!#PRTWorldSBK 🇵🇹 pic.twitter.com/SX9J4NP3BV
- WorldSBK (@WorldSBK) October 1, 2021
González fastest of the day
The Swiss driver, who has a large lead in the world championship over his rival Steven Odendaal, takes second position ahead of Finnish Niki Tuuli. We must then go down to the fourth row to find any trace of Manuel González.
The latter nevertheless retains the absolute reference of this first day in the Algarve, the grip conditions presented by the Portuguese track being much better in the cool of the morning than once the mercury had risen a few hours later.
Another reason for satisfaction for the Iberian, the fact of having beaten his rival Philipp Öttl, with whom he is fighting for third place in the championship. With one point behind the German, González is therefore ideally positioned for the moment to try to get back on the provisional podium in the general classification. Öttl, for his part, must be content with seventh place at the end of this second free practice session today, ahead of the Italians Raffaele de Rosa and Federico Caricasulo.
Odendaal left behind
Randy Krummenacher, for his part, completed these FP2 in eighth place, visibly undisturbed by his technical incident which occurred in the morning, when his Yamaha threatened to catch fire, forcing the Race Direction to wave the red flag. The fact remains that the Helvetian could lack driving time in the evening of this Friday, a shortcoming which could work against him at the time of qualifying, scheduled for tomorrow morning.
Odendaal finished in ninth place, ahead of Patrick Hobelsberger, tenth. Relegated to 62 points behind Aegerter in the general standings, the situation of the South African, mathematically still in the running for the title of World Champion in the category this season, seems to be off to a bad start, with only three rounds left to go. argue.
