The first day of activity at the #FrenchWorldSBK round saw French rider Lucas Mahias (GRT Yamaha Official WorldSSP Team) conclude the opening sessions leading the combined timesheets courtesy of a best time from FP1.

Mahias’ best effort of 1’41.502 on Friday morning was the quickest of the day in the WorldSSP class Magny-Cours, with his title rival Kenan Sofuoglu (Kawasaki Puccetti Racing) just behind him in second, followed by Federico Caricasulo (GRT Yamaha Official WorldSSP Team) in third.

PJ Jacobsen (MV Agusta Reparto Corse) and Niki Tuuli (Kallio Racing) completed a top five of riders whose best times of the day all came in FP1. Sixth and seventh respectively on the combined timesheet were Sheridan Morais (Kallio Racing) and Alessandro Zaccone (MV Agusta Reparto Corse), who both recorded their best times in FP2.

Friday’s WorldSSP top ten also featured Jules Cluzel (CIA Landlord Insurance Honda), Michael Canducci (Puccetti Racing Junior Team FMI) and Gino Rea (Team Kawasaki Go Eleven).

An incident-packed FP2 session was red flagged twice due to crashes meaning the riders had to maintain their concentration in their pitboxes whilst waiting for the action to resume. The first incident saw Luke Stapleford (Profile Racing), Roberto Rolfo (Team Factory Vamag) and Caricasulo crash at turn 5, with the second red flag being shown later due to a crash at turn 6 involving Sofuoglu, Rea, Lachlan Epis (Response RE Racing) and Lorenzo Zanetti (Team Factory Vamag). None of the riders were seriously affected by the crashes.

On Saturday at the Pirelli French Round the WorldSSP riders will undertake FP3 at 9.20am local time, followed by SP1 at 2pm and SP2 at 2.25pm.