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SBK, Toprak smashes the track record at Portimao! Bulega at 4 tenths

The Turk sets a time of 1'39.592 ahead of Nicolò on the Ducati. 3rd Lowes with the Bimota followed by van der Mark and Gardner. 6th Petrucci then Locatelli and Bautista, 10th Bassani, 11th Montella, 13th Fernandez, 14th Iannone

SBK: Toprak smashes the track record at Portimao! Bulega at 4 tenths

It couldn't get any better than this! Toprak Razgatlioglu was the undisputed star of the Portimao tests. After putting everyone in line on Friday, the Turk confirmed his superb form on the second and final day as well, setting the unofficial track record of 1'39.592, which is 18 thousandths better than the record held by Rea (Kawasaki) in 1'39.610.

The message therefore seems to have arrived loud and clear to the competition: the BMW standard bearer seems in fact to have left behind the difficulties encountered in Australia, to such an extent that he was the only one able to go under the wall of 1'40.

Behind him in second place was Nicolò Bulega, who in the final part managed to move up the ranking, grabbing second position at 425 thousandths from Toprak's mark. It was a complicated Saturday for the Ducati rider, victim of a bad crash in the morning in turn 11, but without suffering any consequences.

Behind the Aruba rider there was the Bimota of Alex Lowes, seven tenths off the pace, then the BMW of van der Mark, chased in turn by the first of the Yamahas, the GRT version of Remy Gardner, who however had a gap from the top close to one second.

Outside the top five we can then find Danilo Petrucci, who was sixth fastest ahead of Locatelli's R1 and Bautista's Panigale V4. Completing the top ten were Sam Lowes and Axel Bassani. On the other hand, Yari Montella remained on the fringes of the top ten, followed by Vierge's Honda and the Yamaha of Augusto Fernandez, who completed his first outing in Portimao riding the Japanese bike in Superbike.

On this occasion the Spaniard did better than Andrea Iannone, who did not go beyond the 14th time with a gap of almost two seconds from Toprak.

Among the Sueprsports, the best rider turned out to be Can Oncu on the Evan Bros Yamaha R9 in 1'43.623 followed by Mahias, Manzi, Rinaldi and Taccini.

 

Translated by Julian Thomas

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