After many changes to the technical regulations for the 2015 FIM Superbike World Championship this final test against all their competitors allowed new signing Rea and long-time Kawasaki rider Sykes to measure themselves in terms of pure speed over one lap, and full race pace.
Both riders are confident in their performance on used tyres and have declared themselves ready to enter race weekend, which commences with the first practice sessions on Friday 20th February.
Over two days of dry testing at PI, with a cooler and overcast second day, Rea completed a total of 139 laps, more than any other rider. He was one of only three competitors under the 1’31 second mark, setting a 1’30.880 best lap in the last of four individual track sessions.
Sykes had the misfortune to crash at the very fast final corner this afternoon but escaped without injury. He jumped on his spare Ninja ZX-10R and still posted impressive times right to the end, with his best of 1’31.075 a strong performance at a circuit he has never felt to be one of his favourites. He completed a total of 127 laps over the two days.
The two 22-lap races at the 4.445km long Phillip Island circuit next Sunday will form the first round of a 13-round season, which will also take in races in Thailand, Malaysia, America and Qatar, as well as several rounds in Europe.
Jonathan Rea: “I am happy to go into race weekend like this, although we still have some things to work on. It is just a bit of an unknown really so I am just working with my guys on the bike and trying to focus on going as fast as we can for all 20-laps. I was able to do a long run today and was able to keep most of the laps in the 1’31s. I do not know how competitive that is going to be but for now it is a start and we have that information to work with. We have done all the testing we can do, so I am happy that race weekend is coming. All the anticipation and excitement is there but we do not have to wait long now. I am looking forward to the lights going out on race day. Definitely, this is the best position we have ever been in at the start of a season.”
Tom Sykes: “In general I am relatively happy and we set some good lap times at the end on used tyres. We have got a little bit of thinking to do now to decide our final direction for the race weekend and it is not a bad situation to be in, even though I had a very strange crash today. As I entered the last corner I felt OK but then I lost the rear quite easily. I tried to correct it and when I did it reacted and threw me over the high side. The boys worked really well and they were able to get out on the second bike, on a different set-up, so I was able to gather more information. Phillip Island is not ‘my’ circuit so to be so fast over race distance is promising. Credit to the boys and Kawasaki for giving me what I need. The Ninja ZX-10R is working well and if it does what I want it to then we can have a good race weekend.”
Pere Riba, Crew Chief for Jonathan Rea, commented: “I am happy because before we came here I am sure everybody was thinking where we would be at this test. The rules have changed in the Superbike class and we have less power compared to last year. Some of our rivals are also going well - but we are in there. We have a lot of information after these two days to help us on race weekend. We have good information about the tyres because they are quite critical at this track. We made a long run and we understood many things after that. We also continue to understand Jonathan more each day because he has not been with us in the team for such a long time. We are looking for the best set-up for him. I believe the person who wins the races here will be the one who manages the tyres best and there will be four or five fast riders. But the most important thing is to manage all 22-laps.”
Marcel Duinker, Crew Chief for Tom Sykes, commented: “These two days were very interesting because we are closer to the top than we expected. After the rule changes for this year we expected the gap to be bigger but the inline fours are ruling so far. The crash only lost us 20 minutes of the session so it was not that bad. We had only a very few items left over from Jerez to test and Phillip Island is a slightly different track. We managed to re-evaluate them and on every set of tyres we did close to race distance or full race distance. Our pace was one of the best. Our ‘ideal’ lap time is one of the fastest as well. We are ready for race weekend but from the test to the race still things may change. Every year that is the same situation but we are ready and looking forward to Friday.”