Kawasaki’s Jonathan Rea continued as he started at MotorLand Aragon and topped the afternoon timesheets, with Ducati’s Marco Melandri close behind.
Rea spent much of FP2, as usual, working on his race pace. Worryingly for the rest, the Northern Irishman posted a devastatingly fast and consistent, never straying away from the 1m50.9s-1m51.1s bracket.
Sitting fourth in the standings as the session drew to a close, Rea shot to the top of the pile with a 1m50.062s despite a sprinkling of rain in the third sector of the 5.1km Spanish circuit.
Melandri got off to a steady start this morning, but upped his pace significantly in FP2 to end the day second fastest overall and just 0.099s outside of Rea’s best, making the Ducati rider a real threat for pole tomorrow.
Rea’s team-mate Tom Sykes completed the top three and was just under two tenths down, with Chaz Davies fourth fastest. Though better than his situation this morning, Davies didn’t turn too many laps and ends the day with a fairly lowly total of 21.
Alex Lowes couldn’t quite improve on his FP1 best, but heads into tomorrow bypassing the first stage of qualifying in fifth. Xavi Fores was just a few hundredths shy in sixth, with Jordi Torres, Michael van der Mark, Eugene Laverty and Leandro Mercado completing the top 10.
Both Honda riders Stefan Bradl and Nicky Hayden looked on course for a place in SP2 after showing promise this morning. However, neither could improve on their times from FP1 and ended the day 11th and 12th respectively.
They’ll have their hands full in SP1 tomorrow morning, with 13th-placed Markus Reiterberger on the Althea BMW looking particularly threatening.
Leon Camier’s afternoon was a lot smoother than it has been for some time, but he still didn’t manage as many laps as he would have hoped and heads into tomorrow’s running 18th on the combined times.
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