Round four of the Bennetts British Superbike championship started well for the Airwaves Ducati team at Oulton Park today. Leon Haslam was 2nd and 1st and Gregorio Lavilla recorded a 6th and 4th place finish, in the day’s two free practice sessions.
In first practice Greg and Leon had only completed a few laps when the session was halted due to a red flag. When they returned to the track both Airwaves Ducati riders lapped consistently and quickly improved their best times. With 20 minutes left in the session Greg went into 1st position with a time of 1:36.617; this remained his best lap and eventually resulted in a 6th position finish. In the closing minutes of first practice Leon took the lead with a 1:36.394, however this was bettered by Jonathan Rea in the final minute pushing Leon into 2nd place.
In second practice Greg and Leon both completed a full race run with Dunlop race tyres. The 50 minute practice session saw Greg complete 26 laps and Leon 25. It was a closely fought session, with the top 6 riders all setting times within half a second of each other. Leon improved his best time on 3 consecutive laps to take the lead towards the end of practice; he set the fastest time of the day, 1:35.871 on lap 20 to finish in 1st place. Greg finished 0.29 seconds behind his team mate in 4th, having recorded his best time of the day, 1:36.161 on lap 23.
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