WorldSBK Navarra FP3: Rookie Andrea Locatelli leads the way

August 21, 2021 EMR Writer

Andrea Locatelli improves his best time from yesterday by a full second to lead FP3.

Andrea Locatelli continues to impress many since his move up to the World Superbike class after a dominating 2020 campaign in World Supersport saw him win nearly every race he contested with 12 wins over 15 races, after making the switch to 1000cc machinery Locatelli has been improving his craft race by race arriving at the podium in fine style at Assen before following this up with some more silverware in Most.

Fast forward to today where he now leads the FP3 session at Navarra with a time teetering on the edge of the 1:36’s after failing to break into the 1:37’s yesterday, the rapid rookie led Scott Redding by 0.236 then Jonathan Rea in third who was able to gather some solid data yesterday in FP2 finishing in P7 before an improvement in FP3 to fire him back up the leaderboards.

Toprak Razgatlioglu has been beaten by his teammate in a rare occurrence this morning, although it is only FP3 therefore there’s no doubt it will change again during qualifying this afternoon, rounding out the top 5 was the fastest independent rider Garrett Gerloff placing himself as the third Yamaha in the top five. Michael van der Mark made a strong improvement this morning after finishing in P11 yesterday, the BMW rider looks to have found something to enable him to fight for the podium in Race 1 today.

Alex Lowes went seventh fastest ahead of Michael Ruben Rinaldi with Tom Sykes and Jonas Folger rounding out the top 10, Folgers arrival putting three BMW’s within the top 10 positions, further down the order Chaz Davies was unable to replicate yesterdays speed finishing down in P14 with Axel Bassani in P16.

Full results –