Supersport practice at Estoril: Top three in the World Championship lag behind – record under threat

In the Supersport World Championship, there is only one 40-minute free practice session on Friday; at 4 pm local time – Portugal is one hour behind CET – qualifying gets underway. When the session began at 11.20 am, the temperature was 22 degrees Celsius; the weekend is set to be pleasantly warm for autumn.

After seven minutes, there was a brief interruption due to Roberto Garcia in Turn 1; afterwards, Can Öncü from the Ten Kate Yamaha team took the top spot on the timing screens with a lead of over 0.7 seconds. The Turkish rider was immediately on top form: With a time of 1:39.449, he was just over 0.4 seconds off the lap record at the halfway stage – a record set by Valentin Debise (Ducati) last year during the Sunday morning warm-up with a time of 1:39.042.

In the final five minutes, the standings were thoroughly shaken up. First, former world champion Lucas Mahias (GMT94 Yamaha) took the lead, then Öncü struck back with a time of 1:39.084 minutes, setting an outstanding fastest lap and coming close to the lap record.

Philipp Öttl (Feel Ducati), the only German in the field, had been flying under the radar until shortly before the chequered flag came down, but with just 2 minutes left on the clock he catapulted himself into third place. Prior to that, the Bavarian had repeatedly shone with fastest times in individual sectors, but had never managed to put together a perfect lap.

In the end, Öncü finished 0.334 seconds ahead of Mahias and 0.442 seconds ahead of Öttl. Behind Farioli, Kawasaki works rider Jeremy Alcoba finished fifth, Triumph ace Tom Booth-Amos sixth, World Championship runner-up Debise finished eighth on the ZX Moto, Arenas came 10th and World Championship third-place finisher Jaume Masia (Orelac Ducati) in 14th.

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