MONTEREY, Calif. – Chaz Davies put his ARUBA.IT Racing – Ducati bike on the top of the scoring pylon during the opening day of MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship practice Friday at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca.
Davies raced to the top spot thanks to his best lap of 1:23.387, which was .032 of a second ahead of reigning World Superbike kingpin Jonathan Rea.
“It’s definitely a good start to the weekend even though it’s only Friday, and it was good to see that P1 on the pit board again,” Davies said. “It’s been since Imola and we’ve had some trying times in between but we really felt like we turned the corner in that session. We changed some quite drastic stuff from the morning and just went in the right direction. Overall the bike worked really good, so I’m very happy and hopefully we can take another step forward tomorrow. This is a track where I usually go well at so the target this weekend is to be up there and challenge for the podiums.”
Álvaro Bautista, Rea’s main title rival this year, was third fastest aboard his Ducati. Bautista ended the day .263 off the pace set by his teammate Davies.
BMW Motorrad’s Tom Sykes ended the day fourth overall, followed by Leon Haslam on the second Kawasaki bike.
Loris Baz, Toprak Razgatlioglu, Alex Lowes, Michael van der Mark and Jordi Torres completed the top-10.
American J.D. Beach, making his World Superbike debut, ended the day 15th fastest.