Melandri edges out Rea in final practice
Full WorldSBK FP4 results from Portimao
Marco Melandri has broken Jonathan Rea’s dominance at Portimao by topping the final free practice session ahead of qualifying.
Full WorldSBK FP4 results from Portimao
Marco Melandri has broken Jonathan Rea’s dominance at Portimao by topping the final free practice session ahead of qualifying.
The reigning World Superbike champion enjoyed a clean sweep in the Friday practice sessions but narrowly missed out in FP4 to the Aruba.it Racing Ducati rider with Melandri posting the fastest lap of the weekend of 1m 41.601s to go 0.065 quicker than Rea.
The front two were comfortably clear of the chasing pack over a single fast lap with Michael van der Mark in third place for Pata Yamaha but over six-tenths of a second off the pace.
Barni Ducati’s Xavi Fores maintained his strong practice speed in fourth place ahead of MV Agusta’s Jordi Torres, set to make his MotoGP debut next weekend in Aragon as replacement rider at Avintia Ducati, with Alex Lowes taking sixth place in FP4 for Pata Yamaha.
Tom Sykes could only reach seventh quickest in the 20-minute session on his injury comeback for Kawasaki while Leon Camier produced a late improvement to move up to eighth for Red Bull Honda ahead of Milwaukee Aprilia’s Eugene Laverty and factory Ducati’s Chaz Davies who rounded out the top ten.
Davies will need to progress through Q1 in qualifying to reach the pole position shootout after suffering a fiery crash during FP3 yesterday which meant he missed out on a top ten spot.
Lorenzo Savadori was another to miss out on the automatic Q2 places for Milwaukee Aprilia but did finish FP4 in 11th place ahead of Althea BMW’s Loris Baz and Puccetti Kawasaki’s Toprak Razgatlioglu.
