Aragon WSBK: Bautista maintains dominance in Friday practices

Bautista spent most of both practices in first place, both sessions held in damp conditions with drops of rain reported, and topped them with nearly identical times, ending the day with a 1m49.607s.

His closest challenger on both occasions was Yamaha's Alex Lowes, the Briton significantly closing the gap in FP2, but still ending up with a sizable 0.519s difference.

Kawasaki rider Jonathan Rea was third in both sessions and was just two hundredths of a second slower than Lowes.

BMW's Tom Sykes brought a fourth different bike into the top four - he was black-flagged in FP2 for not pulling into the pits following a crash, but was allowed to carry on just four minutes later.

In fifth, Eugene Laverty (GoEleven) was Bautista's closest challenger within the Ducati camp as his teammate Chaz Davies continued to struggle, going 1.3s slower in ninth place overall.

The Welshman was also beaten by Sandro Cortese (GRT Yamaha), Leon Haslam (Kawasaki) and Markus Reiterberger (BMW), the trio occupying sixth, seventh and eighth respectively, while the top 10 was completed by Michael Ruben Rinaldi (Barni Ducati).

The three Hondas struggled immensely as they were the three slowest riders by a massive gap as team pace-setter Leon Camier was eight tenths slower than Jordi Torres, the lowest-ranked non-Honda rider.

Combined practice times

Cla	#	Rider	Bike	Time	Gap
1	19	Alvaro Bautista	Ducati	1'49.607
2	22	Alex Lowes	Yamaha	1'50.126	0.519
3	1	Jonathan Rea	Kawasaki	1'50.149	0.542
4	66	Tom Sykes	BMW	1'50.226	0.619
5	50	Eugene Laverty	Ducati	1'50.356	0.749
6	11	Sandro Cortese	Yamaha	1'50.636	1.029
7	91	Leon Haslam	Kawasaki	1'50.754	1.147
8	28	Markus Reiterberger	BMW	1'50.799	1.192
9	7	Chaz Davies	Ducati	1'50.920	1.313
10	21	Michael Ruben Rinaldi	Ducati	1'50.985	1.378
11	33	Marco Melandri	Yamaha	1'51.053	1.446
12	60	Michael van der Mark	Yamaha	1'51.103	1.496
13	54	Toprak Razgatlioglu	Kawasaki	1'51.232	1.625
14	36	Leandro Mercado	Kawasaki	1'51.560	1.953
15	81	Jordi Torres	Kawasaki	1'51.576	1.969
16	2	Leon Camier	Honda	1'52.364	2.757
17	23	Ryuichi Kiyonari	Honda	1'53.800	4.193
18	52	Alessandro Delbianco	Honda	1'53.883	4.276