Jonathan Rea is once again the man to beat. The KRT rider from Ballymena was second in FP2 after being beaten by his team-mate Tom Sykes, but as FP3 took place on the dry track WorldSBK went back to the “old habits” and Rea finished the session in first place.
Halfway the session Sykes was leading the standings thanks to a lap in 1’28.751, but just a few minutes later Rea went first by riding in 1’28.234. With less than 10 minutes to go Sykes passed Rea again by just 27 milliseconds (1’28.207), but the three times World Champion replied in the very final stages with a lap in 1’28.003, fast enough to secure P1 in FP3 and Friday standings.
Lorenzo Savadori is who ranked third behind the Kawasaki Racing duo. The Milwaukee Aprilia’s Italian was half a second slower than Rea, but also faster than other home heroes Alex Lowes and Eugene Laverty, who ranked fourth and fifth. The trio was followed by Michael van der Mark, Leon Haslam and Loris Baz, from 6th to 8th place, and also from “wonder boy” Bradley Ray.
The 21-year-old British Superbike race winner is contesting UK Round as a wildcard and, despite riding a BSB-spec Buildbase Suzuki, he finished FP3 and Friday sessions in 9th place and so he will go straight to Superpole 2 also together with Marco Melandri.
Difficult times for Ducati: the not good performance from Melandri (10th) adds up to Chaz Davies’ half-session crash. The Welsh rider fell at Redgate and was limping as he got up. Further info will come soon, but everyone at Donington hopes that Chaz has no injury. Also Barni Ducati’s Xavi Forés had a crash at Redgate and so the Spaniard will have to do SP1 after ranking just 23rd.
Going back to the classification, Luke Mossey ranked 11th after being kicked out of top 10 by Melandri right at the end of FP3 and he will be joined by many other valid riders including Niccolò Canepa, Toprak Razgatlioglu, Leon Camier (still suffering for Aragon injury), wildcard entries Gino Rea and Mason Law and MV Agusta’s Jordi Torres (stopped by a technical issue in the first minutes of the session).
