Rea raises benchmark as Yamaha return to fore in Aragon FP3

WorldSBK Aragon - Free Practice Results (3)

Jonathan Rea turned in the quickest lap time of the weekend thus far in third and final free practice ahead of Round 4 of the 2020 WorldSBK Championship at Motorland Aragon. 

The Kawasaki Racing rider stopped the clock at 1m 50.287secs to move a comfortable two tenths up on Loris Baz and Michael van der Mark, who enjoyed a stronger start to Saturday than they experienced on Friday as they lifted their respective Yamahas up the order in second and third positions. 

The final session before the riders return to track this morning for the all-important Superpole qualifying, Alvaro Bautista bounced back from his troubled Friday to show good potential on the Honda CBR1000RR-R.

The Spaniard - a triple race winner with Ducati at Aragon last year - didn’t set a time in yesterday afternoon’s FP2 session after technical problems, but as the venue Honda has conducted much of its testing with the new Fireblade, Bautista was straight back to form in FP3 with fourth.

Alex Lowes was fifth best on the second of the Kawasakis, with Michael Ruben Rinaldi leading a muted Ducati challenge in sixth from Leon Haslam on the next Honda, Chaz Davies on the factory Ducati and Tom Sykes on the best of the BMWs.

Federico Caricasulo cracked the top ten, in so doing out-performing Scott Redding and Toprak Razgatlioglu, the title contenders down the order in 11th and 12th. However, with the top 11 riders all within a second of one another, there is the potential was a close run Superpole session later this morning.