It was Leon Camier who set the pace following the first hour of Free Practice on Friday ahead of this weekend’s Motul Thai Round of WorldSBK.

As a flurry of lap times came in at the end of the session, the British rider posted a 1’36.047 effort to go just under three tenths of a second quicker than Nicky Hayden (Honda WorldSBK Team) and World Championship leader Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team) followed by the second respective Honda and Kawasaki riders, Michael van der Mark and Tom Sykes.

Some suffered misfortune. Althea BMW Racing Team’s Jordi Torres experienced a light crash at Turn 1 before rejoining the action. Others stopped on-track with apparent technical problems: early pace-setter Sylvain Guintoli (Pata Yamaha Official WorldSBK Team) ground to a halt at Turn 1 and Dominic Schmitter (Grillini Racing Team) pulled off the circuit at Turn 4, whereas the Milwaukee BMW machine of Karel Abraham coasted slowly back into the pit lane.

The field will continue to be tested by the hot and humid conditions of Thailand as Free Practice 2 kicks off at 13:30 local time (GMT +7).

At the end of Friday, the combined top ten will be submitted to Saturday’s second Tissot-Superpole phase, which will decide the grid for both of the weekend races.