SSP | Pata Italian Round, FP: Federico Caricasulo closes in the lead

Excellent performance by Federico Caricasulo who closed the free practice of the Supersport World Championship in the lead with the Yamaha of the GRT team at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari in Imola, scene of the fifth round of the season, thanks to a 1'51.190, set in the final stages of FP2.

With this time he beats his teammate and championship leader Lucas Mahias, second after finishing first in FP1: the Italian driver clearly aims to redeem himself after the bad crash in Assen.

Third and fourth times for Sandro Cortese and Jules Cluzel, all on Yamaha, ahead of the most anticipated rider of this weekend, Kenan Sofuoglu, who will retire from racing after the race scheduled for Sunday: the Turkish rider will leave competitions after five Supersport world titles (2007, 2010, 2012, 2015 and 2016).

Sofuoglu is in his first race weekend after the injury at Phillip Island: for the Kawasaki Puccetti Racing team rider, the fifth fastest time is an encouraging result considering that he is seven tenths of a second behind Caricasulo.

The riders completing the top ten that directly access the second heat of Tissot-Superpole are Raffaele de Rosa, Luke Stapleford, Ayrton Badovini, Hikari Okubo and Randy Krummenacher: the last two were involved in crashes without consequences in the final phase of FP2, together also with Hannes Soomer and Davide Stirpe.

There are five wild card Italian riders that we will see in action here in Imola, namely Nicola Jr. Morrentino, Davide Stirpe, Massimo Roccoli, Lorenzo Gabellini and Marco Malone 28th: ​​all of them will have to compete for access to Superpole2 in the first heat.