Davies ends Friday top of the pile Down Under

Aruba.it Ducati’s Chaz Davies topped the combined time sheets at the end of second practice as the runners for the first Superpole sessions of the 2017 season have been decided.

Much of the session so the riders working on long runs, with only a handful bettering their effort from this morning’s FP1.

Davies sat top of the pile for much of FP2 by virtue of his FP1 time, and failed to improve on this in the closing stages of the session. Nonetheless, his 1m30.189s from this morning sees him remain ahead of Kawasaki’s Jonathan Rea, who was fastest on the FP2 time sheets, and Barni Racing’s Xavi Fores.

Tom Sykes ended the afternoon fourth fastest once again, with fifth quickest Marco Melandri the first of the riders to improve on their FP1 best, though only by half a tenth. Yamaha’s Alex Lowes remained sixth, lowering his time from this morning by six hundredths.

Milwaukee Aprilia’s Lorenzo Savadori was the big improver in FP2, the Italian finding a massive eight tenths of a second on his FP1 best on the RSV4-RF. He’ll head into SP2 along with Honda’s Nicky Hayden and both Althea BMW’s.

Savadori’s gain was his team-mate Eugene Laverty’s misfortune. The Northern Irishman had made a gain of half a second this afternoon, a 1m31.287s elevating him to 10^th late on. But Savadori’s impressive effort demoted him to 11^th and he’ll contest a pretty volatile SP1 tomorrow.

Yamaha’s Michael van der Mark will be disappointed to end the day 12^th and out of SP2 having shown good pace throughout the winter on the YZF-R1. What will have him even more baffled is the near six-tenth deficit to team-mate Lowes in sixth.

MV Agusta’s Leon Camier’s mechanical woes from this morning persisted and he could only manage two laps in FP2. He ends the day a disappointing 13^th having looked very competitive in the Phillip Island test this week.

Honda’s Stefan Bradl failed to improve in FP2 and was 16^th as he gets set for his first WorldSBK qualifying session, whilst wildcard Josh Brookes impressed on his British Superbike-spec Yamaha in 18^th and just 1.8s from top spot.