A positive start to the eni FIM Superbike World Championship weekend at the Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca saw both Randy de Puniet and Alex Lowes in the top ten for Friday’s practices with eighth and ninth respectively, with de Puniet’s ideal pace hinting at seventh on his Yoshimura-powered GSX-R.

His season’s best performance for Friday practice continued into the afternoon as the Frenchman’s confidence, renewed from his recent ‘arm pump’ surgery, settled into his familiar rhythm with the Monterey track. Setting a 1’24.598 on his fifth lap of the second session, de Puniet concluded the day eighth in the combined times and eager to continue his development tomorrow.

Opening his second visit to the Californian circuit by completing 45 laps during the day’s two 45-minute sessions, Lowes worked consistently with his Voltcom Crescent Suzuki GSX-R1000 to improve corner-entry confidence. With work still to be done, the British racer heads into Saturday’s final qualifying practice firmly in the top 10 and less than a second from the front times.

While air temperatures rose gently to an agreeable 23°C, the blue skies and Californian sun warmed the track by a further 20 degrees for the mid-afternoon action. Chaz Davies claimed the provisional pole for Ducati, his 1:23.633 lap just two-tenths from the current lap record.

Lowes and de Puniet return to the Mazda Raceway at 09:45hrs local time (17:45BST) tomorrow for the final timed-for-qualifying practice, with Superpole commencing at 15:00hrs (23:00BST).



Randy de Puniet:

“I’m very happy! Today was a really good day, the feeling of the GSX-R has been good since first thing this morning and I’m feeling good myself on the bike. We’ve made some adjustments, some good some not, but in the end everything looks ok so far with the original settings and the lap time also looks good. I’m really hoping we can continue in this direction for the rest of the weekend and improve a little further to be close to the top five. It’s great to have two strong sessions and be close to the top, and I’m feeling much, much better after my surgery so I’m happy. I think the break was good for everybody, thanks to the team for continuing to work so hard throughout the year, now if we can have a good race and finish the season in this way it will be great.”

Alex Lowes:

“Today we’ve been trying to find a bit more confidence from the bike. We’ve made a bit of progress throughout the day, it’s only Friday and there is still more to do but the lads are working hard as always. I’m looking forward to tomorrow, the track is great and I really enjoy riding it so hopefully we can find that bit of confidence, which I think will translate into big improvements in the lap times, so fingers crossed for tomorrow.”

Paul Denning – Team Manager:

“It’s great to be at Laguna Seca enjoying the Californian weather at such an amazing race track. As always two 45-minute session fly by very quickly and we didn’t get everything done that we would have liked to but none the less it was a pretty positive day overall. It’s Randy’s best Friday performance all year by some margin and it is great to see him riding with more confidence and enjoying the GSX-R.

“For Alex it has been a bit more frustrating, the pace is very consistent but it’s not fast enough to challenge the top competitors and we need to make some reasonably big changes, which always has the potential of going the wrong way but we need to make that step forward! Randy’s performance – being a lot closer to the top guys – will also help in terms of data so hopefully the riders can work together to help each other to improve.”

Laguna Seca – eni FIM Superbike World Championship – Free Practice Combined Times:

1. Chaz Davies (Ducati) 1’23.633: 2. Tom Sykes (Kawasaki) +0.156: 3. Davide Giugliano (Ducati) +0.225: 4. Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki) +0.388: 5. Niccolò Canepa (Ducati) +0.510: 8. Randy de Puniet (Voltcom Crescent Suzuki) +0.965: 9. Alex Lowes (Voltcom Crescent Suzuki) +0.995.