Kawasaki’s Tom Sykes ended the first practice session for the German World Superbike round top of the pile from team-mate Jonathan Rea.
This morning’s hour-long session at the Lauistzring marked the resumption of hostilities in 2017 following a six-week summer break.
Sykes – second in the championship ahead of this round – set the early pace on his ZX-10RR, the Yorkshireman going top with a 1m38.017s and lowering that to a 1m37.715s 15 minutes into the session.
The Kawasaki rider continued to lower the benchmark, Sykes posting a 1m37.372s at the halfway point to get close to Chaz Davies’ pole record from last year.
Sykes dipped underneath that time with 20 minutes to go with a 1m37.337s, which remained unchallenged right to the chequered flag.
Rea was fairly anonymous for much of the session, though the championship leader fired in a 1m37.504s at the end to jump up to second on the timesheets ahead of Ducati’s Davies.
The Milwaukee Aprilia duo of Lorenzo Savadori and Eugene Laverty enjoyed one of their strongest opening sessions of the year, the RSV4-mounted pair completing the top five and within six tenths of the best pace set by Sykes.
Markus Riterberger made a welcome return to WorldSBK this morning having been absent since he parted ways with the Althea team after the Thailand round.
Taking up residence in the German IDM series since, Reiterberger is making a wildcard appearance at the Lausitzring this weekend and ended the morning an impressive sixth fastest.
MV Agusta’s Leon Camier was seventh despite spending the first 20 minutes in his garage with an issue, while Jordi Torres and the Pata Yamaha pairing of Alex Lowes and Michael van der Mark rounded out the top 10.
Stefan Bradl was a few hundredths shy of the top 10 on his Honda in 11th ahead of Xavi Fores and Roman Ramos.
Marco Melandri – who recently re-signed with Ducati for the 2018 season– will be left scratching his head after ending the opening session 1.8s off the pace in 14th.
Davide Giugliano is another WorldSBK returnee this weekend. The Italian had been racing in the British Superbike Championship, but left the series in June and has been snapped up by Honda for the German round following a positive test with the team at the Lausitzring in the summer.
Giugliano ended the morning in 17th spot, 2.3s off the pace. Wildcard Pawel Szkopek was the only faller in the session, the Polish rider coming off at Turn 7.
