Pata Yamaha Prometeon WorldSBK’s Razgatlioglu P2 in Misano Free Practice
Toprak Razgatlıoğlu and Andrea Locatelli completed Friday Free Practice in competitive form at Misano World Circuit “Marco Simoncelli”, on the opening day of the fifth round of the 2023 FIM Superbike World Championship today.
Asphalt temperatures on the near-coastal race track reached near 50 degrees Celsius this afternoon during the crucial Free Practice 2 session which all teams use to analyse data to prepare for the similarly-timed races across the weekend. As always, high temperatures create challenges in a number of areas in WorldSBK, most notably in managing changing grip levels and tyre conservation for a full-race distance.
Both Pata Yamaha Prometeon WorldSBK riders worked on the teams’ tried-and-true Friday plan of set-up confirmation and race simulation across the two 45-minute Free Practice sessions. Razgatlıoğlu finished the day second overall on outright lap pace after topping the timesheets in Free Practice 1, while teammate Locatelli was fifth in the morning but finished P10 overall with clear areas to improve in the set-up of his official Yamaha R1 WorldSBK.
Free Practice 3 starts tomorrow at 09:00 local time (CEST), Superpole qualifying at 11:10 and Race 1 at 14:00.
Toprak Razgatlıoğlu: P2 – 1’34.154
“Today we are starting very strong, then this afternoon we did the race simulation – 20 laps – and it was not bad, but maybe I am expecting a little better pace. Normally, I am expecting to be faster but I have some small problem on the bike, maybe because the temperature is high, and in the first sectors maybe I made some small mistakes – but I hope tomorrow we are improving. Just I need to improve 0.2, 0.3 to fight with Alvaro. I hope we can improve and fight for the win. In the test, especially I am feeling very good performance – good grip and turning with my R1 – but the track conditions were not like today. Today is unbelievably hot! Tomorrow I hope the temperature is a bit lower, we will improve my bike and I will be ready to fight.”
Andrea Locatelli: P10 – 1’34.730
“Day one was not too bad and this morning, the feeling was good – we know where we needed to improve the bike. During the afternoon, the tarmac was really warm so it was more complicated to ride in the hot conditions and more or less, we had a similar problem in the afternoon with my feeling particularly for corner entry. We understand more today what we can do or try to do for this part, because in general and overall the feeling with the base set-up is good. We can be fast if we can just adjust a little bit in some corners and then we will see. We have tomorrow to understand and prepare for the race – it will not be easy because Ducati is so strong, but we try to do our best to have a really good race. It’s important for the championship but also because we are in Italy, so I want to do well. We will enjoy it and see what happens tomorrow.”
