After the first two FIM Superbike World Championship practice sessions were completed at Misano KRT riders Jonathan Rea and Tom Sykes finished their opening day 1-2 respectively. They each now look forward to Superpole 2 on Saturday, which will determine their final grid positions for the first race of the weekend later tomorrow afternoon.
A recent test at Misano, shortly after the Donington Park race weekend, meant that both official Ninja ZX-10RR riders arrived in Italy with good initial settings on their machines. Safe in this knowledge, Tom and Jonathan were able to evaluate some new machine settings today, designed to aid their overall performance in the races.

Front end geometry and alternate tyre options front and back were the main points of focus for Rea, after he lost a few minutes in the pit-box with a small technical issue this morning.

Having set the fastest time in the morning session, with Rea just behind, Sykes lost his final chance to end up fastest of all with a small crash with an experimental set-up on his machine in FP2. He was still comfortably 0.220 seconds faster than the rider in third place.

Now the KRT team will face its rivals again in FP3, which does not count towards Superpole qualification, before taking on Superpole 2 to determined the grid positions for Saturday’s 21-lap race. Race one will take place on Saturday afternoon, at 1pm.


Jonathan Rea, stated: 

“The track feels a little bit more greasy than it did at the tests, not a huge amount, but in the tests I could ride in the 1’34s with ease, and I did so many, but now it is a little bit harder. Our bike works even with less grip on the track, which is important. This morning we confirmed a few items after our test here and in the afternoon we changed the position of the front of the bike a little bit, to try to give me more confidence on the brakes. We have our race tyre package defined already, and the way the bike is set-up, so tomorrow morning we can work on a long run in FP3 before Superpole starts.”

Tom Sykes, stated: 

“The track conditions were stable this afternoon even in the hot conditions, which gave a similar kind of pace compared to this morning. In FP1 I felt the track had less performance than we had in the tests, so we just missed some of that, that’s all. Because we were so good and consistent in the recent Misano test we wanted to explore a few little questions that we had, so at the end of FP2 we did not have our ideal set-up in. I tried to do what I normally do in a perfect scenario and just got caught out and lost the front. It was such a small crash and I am fit and ready to go. We learned a few things today so we will put those things in with our best set-up from testing and go racing.”