Lorenzo Savadori (Milwaukee Aprilia) stunned the field with four minutes to go in Free Practice 2 to take first place in the second Friday session, to the delight of the Italian fans present at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli. With just one session remaining for the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship riders, the battle to enter tomorrow’s Superpole 2 tightened up, with the top eleven inside less than a second.

An astonishing flying lap of 1’34.562 from Savadori in the dying minutes of FP2 shot him ahead of the field, after just managing eleventh in the early Friday session. This came just seconds after Savadori’s teammate Eugene Laverty (Milwaukee Aprilia) had taken the top spot from Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team WorldSBK) by just one thousandth of a second.

The championship leader had dominated most of the forty-minute session, but a late surge by the two Aprilias left Rea in third and unable to battle back. The Northern Irishman was close to losing further spots in FP2, with Loris Baz (GULF Althea BMW Racing Team) coming within just 22 thousandths of a second in fourth.

In a session where all but the bottom four riders improved their earlier times, Alex Lowes (Pata Yamaha Official WorldSBK Team) remained close to the top in fifth and just four hundredths off of second. Leon Camier (Red Bull Honda World Superbike Team) took sixth in FP2, with Marco Melandri (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) in seventh, making it six different machines in the top seven positions for the day.

Xavi Fores (Barni Racing Team) was again the best independent rider out on track, taking the eighth fastest time, ahead of Chaz Davies (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) in ninth and Tom Sykes (Kawasaki Racing Team WorldSBK) in tenth.

Time is running out to qualify for tomorrow’s Superpole 2! Find out which ten riders make it through automatically from 16:05 local time (14:05 GMT) LIVE and OnDemand thanks to WorldSBK VideoPass.