JAKARTA - The leader of the provisional standings Toprak Razgatlioglu appeared dominant in the two free practice sessions of the closing World Superbike series at the Pertamina Mandalika Circuit, Lombok, NTB, Friday.
Launching Antara, the Pata Yamaha with Brixx WorldSBK racer appeared fastest in the FP1 session on Friday morning with a record of 1:34,985 beating Alex Lowes of the Kawasaki Racing Team by a wide margin of 1.544 seconds.
Garrett Gerloff of the GRT Yamaha team finished third with a distance of 1,600 seconds from the leader of the morning session.
Razgatlioglu's main rival in the title race this year, Jonathan Rea was only able to finish P11 in the morning session after his time was 2.401 adrift of the Turk due to technical problems.
In the afternoon practice session, Rea improved his speed and was able to finish in second place with a record of 1:34,404. But Razgatlioglu came within half a second of his record in FP1 to secure a 0.174-second lead over the Kawasaki rider.
Gerloff once again appeared consistent in third place, but with more conditional track conditions, with a difference of 0.225 seconds.
Razgatlioglu shows no signs of slowing down as the 25-year-old Turkish racer looks for his first world title in WSBK as well as breaking Rea's dominance.
Arriving at the season-ending race in Mandalika, Rea will look to overcome a 30-point deficit from Razgatlioglu with a maximum of 62 points available from three races this weekend if he is to defend his title and claim his seventh straight title.
Razgatlioglu has won 13 races and two Superpoles while Rea this season has 11 wins and eight Superpoles.
Race 1 on Saturday afternoon will be Razgatlioglu's first chance to win the world title if he can widen his gap from Rea by at least 37 points.
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