The eighth round of the FIM Superbike World Championship got underway at Laguna Seca on Friday 7th July in dry and warm conditions, with Jonathan Rea and his KRT team-mate Tom Sykes finishing up second and fifth fastest respectively.

Despite an FP2 session which overran significantly, because of the aftermath of two rider’s separate crashes at the Corkscrew chicane, official Ninja ZX-10RR riders Rea and Sykes easily qualified for Saturday’s Superpole 2 contest.

Both Tom and Jonathan were able to complete their main preparations for Saturday’s first 25-lap WorldSBK race and have one more free practice session, of 25 minutes duration, in which to make their final machine set-up to tackle Superpole 2 and then race one at the undulating 3.610km circuit.

Rea was only 0.011 seconds from the fastest rider Chaz Davies after the two opening practice sessions, making good progress in the afternoon after some challenges to overcome in the opening session.

Having missed his ideal opportunity to set his very best lap time after the second red flag incident of the afternoon, Sykes went fifth overall but is confident there will be more to come from both man and machine set-up on Saturday.

Sykes and Rea got to sample the two development SC0 rear race tyres that were brought to Laguna this weekend and will make their final choices on Saturday morning.

Jonathan Rea, stated: 

“Today was good and I think we are ready for tomorrow’s race. We have not so much to change on the bike but I need to improve myself in a few areas. The bike is feeling good but this morning we had a problem with a faulty sensor, so the data was quite strange to look at and we did not make much progress in the first session. In FP2 we went back to pretty much what we started with, made a rhythm on track and changed the bike settings. I evaluated both front and rear tyre solutions, so we have an idea already of our race package. The track is in decent shape and the base package of our bike is not so bad. I am generally satisfied with our day’s work.”

Tom Sykes, stated: 

“There was quite a lot of wind today which was potentially blowing some dust around and we saw a lot of crashes in the last moments of FP2. I think it is the wind maybe just catching people out. Fifth is not fully what I wanted but we tried a couple of things and cleared everything out in readiness for tomorrow. We did not get too much consistency going but tomorrow is raceday so I need to bring something extra, like always. I feel like after a good chat with the team tonight we will put the bike in the ballpark, and tomorrow is another day. I am looking forward to race one. This circuit changes its conditions pretty quick so I think we will be able to put an even stronger package together for tomorrow. Today is just the first day and tomorrow we have Superpole and then the first race.”