Pata Honda’s Jonathan Rea set the second fastest combined time in this evening’s three free practice sessions at Losail International Circuit in Qatar in preparation for Sunday’s title-deciding final round of the 2014 World Superbike championship.

Rea was just 0.1s behind this evening’s provisional pole sitter, Davide Giugliano, with Sylvain Guintoli, the only rider able to prevent Tom Sykes winning his second championship on Sunday, third. Sykes ended the day eighth fastest.

Today was the first time that the series has been run under floodlights and Rea, 27, got off to a blinding start to set the fastest time in Free Practice 1. His Pata Honda team-mate Leon Haslam was 10th in that session but fifth fastest in FP2, with Rea fourth.

Haslam ended the evening in ninth place overall but the 31-year-old is confident of further improvements in tomorrow’s FP4, which will not be timed for the afternoon Superpole sessions that will determine Sunday’s grid positions.

With the third Free Practice session ending at midnight local time, both Pata Honda riders and their crew held a relatively short debriefing session and will return in good time to work on their CBR1000RR Fireblade SPs before FP4, which kicks off at 18.00 tomorrow.

Jonathan Rea - P2, 1m58.013s

We’ve worked really well today. Before coming here, I haven’t been a fan of three sessions in one day and it’s been a tough day. To have three sessions and finish this late at night is quite difficult but we’ve worked really hard on weight distribution and spring balance. We’re still trying to find the optimum session because I’m still struggling to finish off the corner in some areas. But overall the package seems really good here and I’m really enjoying riding. Hence the reason I put so many laps in! I’m learning every time I go out because it’s quite a different experience riding under the lights. But I’m just so happy to be out there because I feel like a Supercross rider! I wish I could ride under lights every race!

Leon Haslam - P9, 1m58.989s

Yeah, it’s not been too bad for the first night here in Qatar. It’s been pretty good actually, although we were a little bit behind after the first session. But we made some good steps for session two and I’ve had the opportunity to try all three tyre options. Unfortunately, the better tyre is always the one that you don’t get so many of, so I didn’t use the softer option later on this evening. But I still managed to go quicker on the harder tyre so I was pretty happy with that. Everyone seems to be making good steps on the tyres so hopefully tomorrow we can do a bit of a longer run on the softer option.

Pieter Breddels - technical co-ordinator

Jonathan was fast from the beginning this evening and we had very few problems during the evening. The bike setting didn’t give us too many problems which was good because we were able to do longer runs and start to work on a race rhythm. We’re looking forward to continuing this way tomorrow. Leon’s first session was not easy but in the end he was ninth and it’s all quite close – he’s only a tenth off Tom Sykes which is not so bad, even though there’s some more work to do. But it looks promising and hopefully he can gain those few tenths tomorrow to close the gap further.

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