WorldSBK Aragon FP Results | Rea stays top as season officially gets underway

Jonathan Rea topped the timesheets on the opening day of action for the new 2022 WorldSBK season, the six-time champion continuing where he left off from pre-season testing.

One of the Ulsterman’s more successful venues, Rea opened up his 2021 campaign with a trio of victories on the Kawasaki ZX-10RR and will be eyeing a similarly perfect start to the new season as he looks to reclaim his crown from Toprak Razgatlioglu.

By contrast, the Turk has a less impressive repertoire in Aragon but was only 0.3s shy of his arch rival in third position, the pair split by the Ducati of Alvaro Bautista, who was quickest in the afternoon’s FP2 session but unable to dislodge Rea’s FP1 benchmark.

Garrett Gerloff led the factory contingent as the top independent, the American ending the day leading the second of the factory Ducati and Kawasaki riders in Michael Ruben Rinaldi and Alex Lowes, while Loris Baz headed up the BMW challenge in a strong seventh for the Bonovo Action outfit.

Andrea Locatelli rounded out the top eight, ahead of surprise package Roberto Tamburini, who built on the promise of his first outing only earlier in the week to set the ninth best time of the day on the Motoxracing Yamaha R1.

Iker Lecuona completed the top ten as the best of the Honda riders, nudging out Philipp Oettl (Go Eleven Ducati) and the impressive Ilya Mikhalchik, - substitute for the injured Michael van der Mark - who ended the day up on Scott Redding, only 16th on the factory BMW M 1000 RR.

The only major incident to come on day one of the season was a wild tumble for Lucas Mahias at Turn 2, the Frenchman walking away uninjured but doing a significant amount of damage to his Puccetti Kawasaki.

 2022 WorldSBK Championship | Motorland Aragon, Spain | FP1+FP2 Results