Pata Maxus Yamaha Duo Demonstrate Pace in Magny-Cours Friday Free Practice
Starting strong on Friday, Andrea Locatelli finished third-fastest and Jonathan Rea seventh overall during Free Practice at Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours for Round 9 of the 2025 FIM Superbike World Championship.
After torrential rain yesterday, the weather brightened for the first day on track following the summer break, with two 45-minute Free Practice sessions to dial in the Yamaha R1 WorldSBK to the 4.411km French venue.
Locatelli quickly built his pace today, with a clear target of a front-row start tomorrow to give himself the best opportunity to fight for the podium in Race 1 – while teammate Rea improved throughout the day to find a comfortable set-up and use the strengths of the R1 to his advantage. Both riders’ crews will continue to work overnight to further refine performance ready for the weekend.
Saturday begins with one final WorldSBK Free Practice at 9:00 CEST, before Superpole at 11:00 and the first points-paying Race 1 at 14:00.
FULL FREE PRACTICE RESULTS
Andrea Locatelli: P3 – 1’35.842
“It was a positive day, we started at a good point this morning and this afternoon we tried to refine and improve my feeling on the R1. It was a good direction and the feeling is coming – unfortunately, today we don’t get any points! But it is always fun and good to finish in the top three – let’s see where we can work to try and improve for tomorrow, because it’s important to try to start in front. We will try to aim for another front-row start like in Balaton, it helps to give us the best opportunity. The race is the race, it’s 21 Laps, you need to not make any mistakes and in Magny-Cours, the track is quite technical, so we will work tonight to try to find a little bit more performance to try to fight for the podium.”
Jonathan Rea: P7 – 1’36.196
“It was a solid enough day because at the end of FP2, I started to feel a little bit more at one with my R1 and riding in a better way. In all honesty, the five or six-week break has taken its toll! We didn’t do any testing and I haven’t ridden for a while. Probably wasn’t riding that great in FP1, but we made some changes to the bike that gave me better feedback and some more confidence to push. I was able to ride with some other riders on track and I felt that I was able to make a really good improvement with my lap time. There are still some areas we need to improve and try to make a step for tomorrow – especially understanding the throttle connection and how the bike spins, maximising the torque and power on accelerations – but in some areas we are really strong, so we can take some confidence from that! We say every weekend that Superpole is important, but it’s more important this weekend because the field fans out very quickly at this circuit before the back straight and it’s important to put ourselves in a good position to get a good start.”
Posted on September 6, 2025 by Michael Le Pard
