Fair weather and a dry track surface welcomed the FIM Superbike World Championship riders to the 5.077km long Motorland Aragon circuit in Spain, as the tenth round of the year got underway on Friday, 26 September.

The BbKRT duo have recently tested at Motorland during the summer break, which allowed the entire bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team effort to have an opening day plan in place before the start of what were two free practice sessions on day one.

Bassani was the fastest KB998 Rimini rider on the day, just 0.020 seconds ahead of Lowes in the combined times. Bassani was pleased with some new machine settings in FP2, having had a challenging FP1 session due to an early rear grip issue.

Lowes started the opening day at a positive pace but had a fall at T8 near the end of FP2, which prevented him from trying to set an even faster lap time before the end of Friday’s action. He was 11th quickest overall, having been ninth after FP1.

Both bimota riders were less than a second from the fastest time of the day, set by championship leader Toprak Razgatlioglu, in FP1.

With day one complete, the WorldSBK competitors will now make their final preparations for FP3, Superpole Qualifying, and an 18-lap Race One on Saturday, 27 September.

Alex Lowes stated: “That was a pretty good opening day for us. In the second session, we did a race simulation and it was not too bad. There are a few areas of the track where we need to improve. In the faster corners, I don’t feel as comfortable as I have been on the KB998, so we need to have a look at that for tomorrow. I crashed at the end, on the first lap using new tyres. I think I got pushed into the downhill T8 a little bit and I just lost the front. In general, I am happy enough for Saturday and I think we did as much of a long run as anyone else. Now, we will try to improve for Superpole and Race One.”

Axel Bassani stated: “FP1 was quite difficult because even on the second lap, my rear tyre was completely finished. In FP2, the feeling was much better and we did some good laps. We then tried something on the rear. The feeling is good with the bike and I felt pretty positive over a lap. We just have to improve something more, especially for the rear grip, because I am sliding a lot. We will check some data for tomorrow and see what we can do after FP3.”