Day One Sees Sykes Quickest And Rea Sixth At Motorland

2016-04-01 09:06
Round three of the FIM Superbike World Championship started on track at Motorland Aragon today with Tom Sykes fastest in the qualifying ranking after two one-hour practice sessions. His is team-mate Jonathan Rea was sixth fastest on the all-new Ninja ZX-10R, after trying some new chassis set-ups.


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Sykes took until eight minutes from the end of the second Friday session to go fastest and then improved his best time again, with a 1’50.712 proving to be 0.375 seconds better than the next nearest rider, Chaz Davies.

Tom’s sheer pace was higher than he had expected, especially in the windy conditions that were in evidence around the 5.077km circuit in the north east of Spain.

Rea tried out some new suspension and chassis adjustments, leading to gains in some areas and losses in some others. ’JR’ and his team will now work with both this new information and data from previous Motorland tests to find a final set-up for race one on Saturday.

With one last 15-minute free practice session to come before Superpole Rea will have time to confirm his final set-up direction before qualifying for grid positions and then racing for points in a quest to extend his championship lead.

This year, under the new regular European schedule, the WorldSBK track action was completed at 14.30 on Friday. Saturday will host the final short free practice session before the first of two final Superpole qualifying sessions begin.

In finishing first and sixth respectively, Tom and Jonathan have already qualified directly into Superpole 2, which begins at 10.55. Race one will take place on Saturday afternoon at 13.00 and race two at the same time on Sunday afternoon.

Tom Sykes stated: “I am happy enough after today and I quite surprised on the pure performances side as I still have some things I would like to improve with the set-up. In general, looking at our performance and potential consistency, I have to be happy. Even considering the windy conditions we were able to manage it quite well. Now my crew chief Marcel, all the boys in the team and I will aim to make the feel a bit more natural in a couple of corners. That is for tomorrow but at the end of day one, when we have to prepare for the races, we are heading in quite a good way.”

Jonathan Rea stated: “We have not quite got the final setting nailed yet and we tried some different things today in each session. To make improvements to the set-up of the new bike we have to try new things sometimes. I tried to make a long run in the afternoon but we did not have the time. We have some data from the fast times we did in testing here in November so we can compare our new data with that now. Tomorrow we will change the bike to a setting we know works and I will get into the rhythm of the bike in the final practice session.”

Roman Ramos (GoEleven Kawasaki) was 16th after Friday’s sessions. Sylvain Barrier (Pedercini Racing Kawasaki) placed 19th. Grillini Racing Kawasaki rider Dominic Schmitter was 21st; Saeed Al Sulaiti (Pedercini Racing Kawasaki) 22nd and returning rider Josh Hook (Grillini Racing Kawasaki) was 23rd after one day on track.

Source: Kawasaki Racing Team

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