Aruba Ducati’s Alvaro Bautista continued to find unmatched speed and advantages from his all-new Ducati V4R on the second day of WorldSBK testing at Phillip Island, topping the timesheets again.
Another ever-improving new package in 2019 - the official BMW Motorrad S1000RR of Tom Sykes – was second, setting up some exciting possibilities for race weekend.
Bautista set a personal best of the test 1’30.303, to get 0.236 seconds clear of Sykes. To put this in perspective, the current lap record, set in a competitive race on regular tyres, is 1’30.848. Nobody has had access to qualifying tyres.
In the overall two-day combined standings, Leon Haslam proved to be third fastest on his KRT machine, easing out his team-mate Jonathan Rea to fourth, on a day of multiple red flags and interruptions of plans for long-runs.
The fastest Yamaha rider proved to be Marco Melandri (GRT Yamaha) who was a double race winner at PI in 2018 on his factory Ducati. He placed fifth, 0.457 seconds from Bautista’s best time.
Continuing a run of slightly unexpected but intriguing final pre-race weekend results, Toprak Razgatlioglu (Turkish Puccetti Racing) was sixth.
Michael van der Mark (Pata Yamaha) and Sandro Cortese (GRT Yamaha) were seventh and eighth respectively. Alex Lowes (Pata Yamaha) and Kawasaki privateer Jordi Torres (Team Pedercini Kawasaki) rounded out the top runners, with the top ten riders covered by 0.921 seconds.
Leon Camier was fastest Moriwaki Althea Honda rider, in 13th place from 19 riders. Chaz Davies was still working through machine set-up and experience issues, and was therefore down in 14th place. Troy Herfoss (Penrite Honda) who will wildcard at PI this weekend, was 19th.
