Aruba Ducati’s Chaz Davies managed to close the gap to Jonathan Rea in the third Magny-Cours World Superbike free practice session this morning in France and goes into this afternoon’s Superpole session a little under two-tenths behind the newly-crowned world champion.
Rea didn’t improve on his lap record breaking pace from yesterday and still tops the timesheets with a 1’37.750 but
concentrated on a race simulation from the start of the session. The Castletown resident was straight into the low 1’38s and stayed there for 18 laps with a best of 1’37.965, coming in for a tyre change late on but not able to beat his time from yesterday. Rea was still second fastest in the session.
Davies managed to pull closer with his final lap of 1’37.938 at the end of 18-lap run just edging out the Red Devils Aprilia of Leon Haslam who also upped his game to a 1’38.008 to jump ahead of Tom Sykes on the combined sheets. The Kawasaki man put in a 1’38.014 at the start of his session which comprises three runs with 10 laps in the 1’38s.
Haslam’s team-mate Jordi Torres found half a second overnight to post a 1’38.344 for fifth place while Voltcom Suzuki’s Alex Lowes couldn’t match his time from yesterday which was enough for a sixth place. Nico Canepa ended in seventh place with Ayrton Badovini, Sylvain Guintoli - who found four-tenths - and Markus Reiterberger going through to Superpole two by right.
Leon Camier missed out and will go through Superpole one this afternoon. He will have to find four tenths to match Reiterberger’s best but has far more experience with the Pirelli qualifiers.
