Aruba.it Racing \u2013 Ducati\u2019s new signing \u00c1lvaro Bautista headed the timesheets after the first two free practice sessions held today at the Phillip Island circuit in Australia. After an FP1 session in which he was classified in second place, \u00c1lvaro was able to move on top of the timesheets just ten minutes into the afternoon\u2019s second free practice. The 34-year-old from Spain, aboard his Ducati Panigale V4 R, which is also making its outright debut in World Superbike, then put in a series of fast laps to end the day in first place with an advantage of just 0.014s over Rea.
It was a difficult day on the other hand for Chaz Davies, who struggled to gain the right confidence with his Panigale V4 R. Even though he is down in fourteenth place, the classification does not reflect his true potential and the Welsh rider can count on improving in the third and final free practice session.
With the introduction of the new format, tomorrow\u2019s schedule will see FP3 take place at 10:00 local time (00:00 CET), the Tissot Superpole at 12:15 (02:15 CET), followed by Race 1 which will be held at 15:00 (05:00 CET).
\u00c1lvaro Bautista (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati #19) \u2013 1:30.327 \u2013 1st <\/b>
\u201cEven though the main aim was not to set the quickest time, today was really positive and I\u2019m very satisfied. We knew we had a good pace, so everything was possible. This morning we made a change to the set-up to try and improve the feeling from the tests at the start of the week, but we didn\u2019t find what we expected. In addition, we tried a new spec of tyre which wasn\u2019t at the test. In the afternoon we decided to work on race distance to verify tyre wear and all in all I\u2019m happy. I\u2019ve got an excellent feeling with the bike and I\u2019m enjoying myself so we\u2019ll try and continue like this tomorrow. As it\u2019s my first race in Superbike many aspects are new to me, it\u2019s not going to be easy but I hope to be able to fight with Rea. We\u2019ll see during the weekend, but for sure I\u2019ll give my all!\u201d
Chaz Davies (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati #7) \u2013 1:31.334 \u2013 14th <\/b>
\u201cThis morning we improved my feeling with the bike from the tests on Monday and Tuesday, while in the afternoon we made another small step forward and I had a good feeling in particular with the used tyres. At the end of the session we put on a new tyre but unfortunately it didn\u2019t make any difference. We\u2019ll carefully study the data and try and make another step forward for Superpole and race 1. On paper my position doesn\u2019t look too good, but the feeling is better than many other times here in the past and that\u2019s the most important thing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Aruba.it Racing \u2013 Ducati\u2019s new signing \u00c1lvaro Bautista headed the timesheets after the first two free practice sessions held today at the Phillip Island circuit in Australia. After an FP1 session in which he was classified in second place, \u00c1lvaro was able to move on top of the timesheets just ten minutes into the afternoon\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1835,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["it","en"],"languages":{"it":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arubaracing.x-brain.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arubaracing.x-brain.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arubaracing.x-brain.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arubaracing.x-brain.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arubaracing.x-brain.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1834"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/arubaracing.x-brain.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1837,"href":"https:\/\/arubaracing.x-brain.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1834\/revisions\/1837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arubaracing.x-brain.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arubaracing.x-brain.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arubaracing.x-brain.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arubaracing.x-brain.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}