Andrea Locatelli finished fourth overall on Friday in a close fight for the top three positions, with Jonathan Rea just a couple of tenths back during Free Practice at MotorLand Aragon in Spain for Round 10 of the 2025 FIM Superbike World Championship.
The Pata Maxus Yamaha riders built a solid base on which to tackle the weekend ahead, utilising Friday’s two 45-minute sessions to log data in preparation for the main points-paying races on Saturday and Sunday.
Further refinement to the set-ups of both Yamaha R1 WorldSBKs overnight will come ahead of Free Practice 3 tomorrow morning at 9:00 CEST, in order to give Locatelli and Rea the opportunity to fight for strong results in Superpole qualifying at 11:00 and Race 1 at 14:00.
FULL FREE PRACTICE RESULTS
Andrea Locatelli: P4 – 1’49.086
“I think it was a positive day, it’s only Friday and for sure we don’t have a lot of time on track but I think we worked very well today. We understood what we are doing on the bike set-up and especially in Free Practice 2, we tried to improve and I made a good lap time on the last exit of FP2. The conditions were a bit strange on track in the afternoon, but I am happy because we did a good job and now we can look forward to see what we can do for tomorrow. It is important to start in the front rows of the grid and then we will do our best in the races – it looks like playing with the tyre to manage the grip level will be key for everyone, 18 Laps is not a short race. I am positive we can manage the consumption of the tyre well and I am happy with the rhythm on my R1 today, let’s see!”
Jonathan Rea: P12 – 1’49.464
“It’s been a mixed day, we didn’t test here – so we arrived with our Magny-Cours set-up which I felt quite comfortable with and straight away this morning I felt good on the R1 and we were fast immediately. That gave us a really positive feeling! Unfortunately, this afternoon we weren’t able to improve a lot. The track was a little bit hotter, not too crazy hot, but the feeling wasn’t the same as this morning so I was struggling to extract the best from the bike. Stopping was difficult and edge grip of the tyre was compromised, my riding wasn’t great and so I didn’t really get to put it all together. Definitely something to look at and analyse why the feeling was worse in the afternoon. We’ll put our heads together now – it’s the first day here to gather data and we’ll try to come out tomorrow morning and make a step.”
Posted on September 27, 2025 by Michael Le Pard
