A close first day of practice and qualifying in the FIM Superbike World Championship race weekend at Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli saw KRT’s Tom Sykes third fastest and his team-mate Jonathan Rea eighth on their Ninja ZX-10Rs. Rea was only 0.269 seconds from the leading rider in the combined opening day times.

In warm conditions and on a dry track surface the official KRT pairing worked towards a race set-up for race one on Saturday and race two on Sunday, with Sykes achieving his position as third fastest rider at the end of play, even after a slow speed fall early in the afternoon.

Neither Sykes nor Rea had tested at Misano after the recent Donington round which gave many of their rivals an early advantage at this track. The KRT riders did, however, make use of their own testing days at Jerez de la Frontera to find their best possible early set-ups at Misano.

With the top ten riders just over half a second from the pre-Superpole best time, and the top eight just over a quarter of a second apart, it was a particularly tight opening day at the flat and largely flowing Misano circuit.

Sykes posted a best lap time of 1’35.388 today; just over a second from the outright WorldSBK record. Rea posted a 1’35.532.

In sometimes high winds Rea was still well on the single lap pace despite his eighth place ranking overall, working through tyre options and completing a positive long run to evaluate tyres and real race pace.

Now both Tom and Jonathan will complete a 15-minute third practice session on Saturday, and then head directly into Superpole 2 to challenge for their final grid positions in readiness for race one on Saturday and race two on Sunday.

Tom Sykes, stated, 

“I am surprised with our pace because we did not test here, unlike some of our rivals. At the start of the afternoon session I felt really good and then we changed a few things to get more information. We did not finish as strongly as we wanted but this was just because needed to check what we were doing and where we were going with bike set-up. We did those checks and now we know what to do tomorrow. This is all positive. The focus for Saturday is to improve on the last small details for the race itself. I think our set-up is relatively good in general. Misano is quite a different track from the previous one at Donington but we are not far away at this circuit already. I feel tomorrow we have the chance to make some small modifications, which I hope will be improvements.”

Jonathan Rea, stated: 

“We are not far away and we made a good step in between FP1 and FP2, just to make it a little bit more easy. I suffered with a bit too much pitching at the beginning but in the afternoon it was OK. We managed to do a long run, a race simulation, and we have good information from that now. The track is behaving a lot differently to last year, when the asphalt was new. It seems the track is using the tyre more than it did last year. Some split times are very constant whether we use a new or old tyre, and some are going away. It also got quite windy out there in the middle of the session, especially going through the really fast corner. We were lucky today because the weather was super hot and we managed to evaluate a new rear tyre that Pirelli brought, which seems to be working well. I am quite satisfied with the opening day.”



After the official KRT runners Anthony West (Pedercini Racing Kawasaki) was the fastest of the Kawasaki privateer entrants, in 12th place, with Roman Ramos (Team GoEleven Kawasaki) 13th. Dominic Schmitter (Grillini Racing Team Kawasaki) completed the top 20, as Gianluca Vizziello (Grillini Racing Team Kawasaki) went 23rd and Saeed Al Sulaiti (Pedercini Racing Kawasaki) placed 24th.