With two 30-minute sessions on the track today (Friday) the Shell Advance Asia Talent Cup riders had plenty of time to learn the eight right and six left corners of the 2.9 mile Twin Ring Motegi circuit.
As expected it was the Japanese riders, many of whom have ridden here before, who led the way early in practice, as Yuta Date and Kaito Toba resumed their battle at the top of both the time sheets and the championship. Date took first blood with the fastest time in FP1 but by FP2 all the riders had started to improve and things got a lot closer.
Date was the first to set a target time and seemed pretty comfortable at that pace, until Toba blitzed it by 0.8s to go top with 20 minutes to go. However two corners later Toba was down after pushing too hard into turn two. He and the bike returned to the pits and the mechanics managed to repair all the crash damage and get him back out on track with six minutes to go.
Despite his crash Toba’s time was good enough for second and he was only beaten to the top spot by a scant 0.125s with the last fast lap of Date. The top three was rounded out by one of the podium finishers from Malaysia, Shafiq Rasol, who closed right in on the pace of the top local riders as the session drew to a conclusion, finishing ahead of hotshots Ryo Mizuno and Takuma Kunimine.
There were further falls for Ayumu Sasaki, Ralph Torres, Tsubasa Yoshida and Sahfiq Ezzariq but all the riders were able to get up and walk away and will be on track tomorrow for the single pressurised qualifying session that will take place at 16:05 local time.
