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Buis leads Huertas in MTM Kawasaki 1-2 in curtailed morning session

Tuesday, 30 March 2021 09:19 GMT

The penultimate session for WorldSSP300 machines took place on Tuesday morning with reigning Champion Jeffrey Buis leading the field

Track action continued for FIM Supersport 300 World Championship riders with the penultimate two-hour session on Tuesday morning as defending Champion Jeffrey Buis (MTM Kawasaki) topped the timesheets ahead of new teammate Adrian Huertas, with WorldSSP300 riders left with only two hours on track which will take place from 2:00pm LT (GMT+1) today.

Huertas had been top of the timesheets for the majority of the session but a lap from Buis with around 15 minutes to go allowed the Dutchman to leapfrog Huertas. It showed a strong performance from MTM Kawasaki at the same circuit they secured an historic 1-2-3-4 finish during the inaugural Catalunya Round in 2020. Vicente Perez Selfa (Machado CAME SBK) finished the session in third place after a relatively quiet session where he kept improving his time throughout.

Ton Kawakami (AD78 Team Brasil by MS Racing) continued his strong showing in Catalunya with fourth place after topping yesterday’s morning session and finishing third overall for the day. He was less than half-a-tenth away from Perez Selfa but also had a three tenths margin to Samuel di Sora (Leader Team Flembbo) in fifth, with Victor Rodriguez Nuñez (Accolade Smrz Racing) rounding out the top six.

Turkish rider Bahattin Sofuoglu (Biblion Yamaha Motoxracing) was seventh after another strong showing with Meikon Kawakami (AD78 Team Brasil by MS Racing) in eighth place. The sole KTM rider in 2021, Victor Steeman (Freudenberg KTM WorldSSP Team) also repeated his strong showing from the opening day with ninth place, just ahead of Sylvain Markarian (Leader Team Flembbo) who rounded out the top ten.

Harry Khouri (Fusport – RT Motorsports by SKM Kawasaki) brought out the only Red Flag of the session when he came off his Kawasaki Ninja 400 at Turn 5, a left-hand hairpin corner which descends on exit, joining Ana Carrasco (Kawasaki Provec WorldSSP300) and Unai Orradre (Yamaha MS Racing) in crashing at the same corner. Gabriele Mastroluca (ProGP Racing) also had an incident in the first part of the lap, crashing for the second time in the two-day test session. James McManus (Team# 109 Kawasaki) came off his bike at the right-hander of Turn 9 with around 30 minutes left in the session. The session came to a premature finish when Red Flags were shown for separate incidents for Bruno Ieraci (Machado Came SBK) and Alejandro Diez (Kawasaki GP Project).

The top six following the morning session in WorldSSP300 on day two, full results here:

1.) Jeffrey Buis (MTM Kawasaki) 1’55.163s

2.) Adrian Huertas (MTM Kawasaki) +0.094s

3.) Vicente Perez Selfa (Machado CAME SBK) +0.525s

4.) Ton Kawakami (AD78 Team Brasil by MS Racing) +0.569s

5.) Samuel di Sora (Leader Team Flembbo) +0.865s

6.) Victor Rodriguez Nuñez (Accolade Smrz Racing) +1.046s

Check out more exciting action from WorldSSP300 using the WorldSBK VideoPass!