van der Mark edges Rea despite heavy high-side at Misano

Full Misano WorldSBK FP2 results

Michael van der Mark has stolen top spot from Jonathan Rea at the end of Friday practice at Misano despite both riders suffering late falls in the second practice session.

After the reigning World Superbike champion slid off at Turn 2 late on in FP2, van der Mark notched up 1m 36.021s to grab top spot from Rea by just 0.008s – with the Northern Irish rider failing to improve on his best FP1 effort.

But looking to push on to extend his advantage at the top, van der Mark suffered a huge high-side exiting the final corner which triggered a late red flag. The Pata Yamaha rider has been taken to the Misano medical centre by ambulance.

With Rea retaining second place on the combined times thanks to his FP1 timesheet-topper, Aruba.it Racing Ducati’s Alvaro Bautista grabbed third place with a late 1m 36.156s.

GRT Yamaha’s Sandro Cortese moved up to fourth place after closing to within a quarter of a second of the leading Pata Yamaha rider to shuffle Alex Lowes into fifth place on the Friday practice times.

Tom Sykes continues to lead the BMW charge in sixth place ahead of Michael Ruben Rinaldi on the Barni Ducati.

With Rinaldi climbing up the order, it saw Chaz Davies pushed down to eighth place on the factory Ducati as Marco Melandri (GRT Yamaha) and Leon Haslam (Kawasaki Racing Team) rounded out the top 10.

Toprak Razgatlioglu briefly moved into the top eight but had his fastest lap time deleted after exceeding track limits on his Puccetti Kawasaki.

Michele Pirro recovered from his FP1 off to take 12^th spot on the Barni Ducati, on his one-off World Superbike outing, to see Markus Reiterberger pushed back to 13^th place.