Supersport World Championship practice at Magny-Cours: Mass crash caused by oil on the track
In the only free practice session of the Supersport World Championship at Magny-Cours on Friday morning, Yamaha ace Can Öncü set the pace. Bavarian rider Philipp Öttl from Team Feel Ducati shone in third place.
This article is an automatically generated English version. The
In the Supersport World Championship, there is only one 40-minute free practice session on Friday, with qualifying starting as early as 4 pm. When it began at 11.20 am, the temperature was already 27 degrees Celsius – it’s set to be a hot weekend.
After ten minutes, an engine failure on Raffaele De Rosa’s QJ caused oil to spill onto the track, bringing down Matteo Ferrari, Andreas Kofler, Federico Caricasulo, Valentin Debise and Tom Booth-Amos. The session then had to be suspended for some time to allow for a thorough track clean-up at Turn 15; at that point, Can Öncü was leading on the Ten-Kate Yamaha with a lead of over three tenths of a second, clocking a time of 1:40.142 mins.
When practice finally resumed, the lap times remained unchanged for the time being. At the halfway stage, Öncü was still in the lead, just 7/10 sec off his own pole record of 1:39.442 min set the previous year. With 15 minutes to go before the chequered flag, the Turkish rider – who had been testing with his team at the Circuit de Nevers-Magny-Cours during the long summer break – improved his time to 1:39.977.
Öncü’s fastest time remained unbeaten until the end; his Yamaha team-mate Roberto Garcia finished second, whilst Philipp Öttl (Feel Ducati), the only German in the field, made a name for himself by coming third.
Honda rider Corentin Perolari surprised everyone by finishing fourth on his home circuit, whilst his team-mate Ana Carrasco finished 27th out of 33 entrants, 2.356 seconds off the pace, having missed the final 12 minutes following a crash.
Federico Caricasulo is finally finding his feet on the ZX Moto; the team has devised a new engine braking strategy for the 2019 World Championship runner-up: 6th place.
The Triumph works team fielded Jorge Navarro (7th) in place of the injured Oliver Bayliss, who crashed during his guest appearance in the British Championship last weekend.
World Championship leader Albert Arenas (AS Yamaha) had a very quiet race on what was a new circuit for him and finished an unusually low 23rd.
Kawasaki works rider Dominique Aegerter finished 20th, whilst rookie Andreas Kofler (Yamaha) ended up in 32nd place following a crash through no fault of his own and the necessary repairs to his R9.
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