Jonathan Rea showed that he’s back to full fitness by setting the fastest time in today’s first qualifying session at round 11 of the World Superbike championship at Imola in Italy.

The 24-year-old, who returned to racing three weeks ago at Nurburgring in Germany following a three-month injury lay-off, took his Castrol Honda CBR1000RR to the top slot at the 4.936km Imola circuit in a time of 1m48.241s – just two tenths quicker than series leader Carlos Checa.

After a successful two-day test at Misano last week, Rea and his team opted to test further a new electronics package on the bike over the Imola race weekend, including a recently-sanctioned ride-by-wire system. Rea’s time was set with the new package.

His Castrol Honda team-mate, Ruben Xaus, racing for the first time since July after his own injury problems, was seventeenth fastest today but the Spaniard is hopeful of further improvement during tomorrow’s qualifying and Superpole sessions.

Jonathan Rea – P1 1m48.241s

I’m really happy because not only am I showing that I’ve come back strongly from the injury, but we’ve also taken the bike into a completely different ballpark now. It’s one of the many steps that we need to make towards 2012 and at the test in Misano last week we could definitely see the potential. We made the right decision to come here to test the ride-by-wire system and we were prepared to sacrifice time and results to develop this new system. We’ve made really good progress already on engine braking and corner entry. There’s still a lot to do on corner exit but the new surface here is much more grippy and the bike’s working well. After the first day here, it’s nice to see P1 on the board again and it gives the guys something to smile about. We’ll not be resting tonight because there’s a long list of things to work through, but hopefully we can keep improving tomorrow.

Ruben Xaus – P17 1m49.855s

It’s been busy with the new electronics today and we’ve been using the full package, so there has been a lot of work to do. I think we’re quite satisfied but it’s still hard to get the feeling back after we’ve made some changes to the bike. We are struggling a little in the two sectors with chicanes, where the power delivery is a little strange. If we can work on those areas for tomorrow, we should be able to improve.

Ronald ten Kate – team manager

Of course, it’s the start of the weekend we were all hoping for but it’s still work in progress. There are still a lot of areas where we have only scratched the surface so far but we are learning more about the new ride-by-wire system with every lap we complete. It’s going well but this is only provisional pole and we still need to work hard on the race set-up. This morning we did a long run with Jonathan which was going very well but I think it will be another long night for the crew to go over all today’s data and improve still further for tomorrow. However, as a team we really needed a day like this again, so we can smile a little tonight as well.

2011 World Superbike championship, round 11 – Imola, Italy

First qualifying results:

1 Jonathan Rea (GBR) Castrol Honda 1m48.241s
2 Carlos Checa (ESP) Ducati 1m48.400s
3 Leon Haslam (GBR) BMW 1m48.701s
4 Michel Fabrizio (ITA) Suzuki 1m48.844s
5 Marco Melandri (ITA) Yamaha 1m48.884s
6 Tom Sykes (GBR) Kawasaki 1m49.003s
17 Ruben Xaus (ESP) Castrol Honda 1m49.855s

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