At a warm and welcoming Laguna Seca circuit in California KRT’s Superbike squad got down to work in the first two practice sessions around the undulating 3.610km circuit, looking for a set-up to best suit the unique challenges offered up at this iconic American venue.
 
With two one-hour sessions to use to the maximum Rea finished up second quickest on day one, a mere 0.074 seconds from the fastest rider. Sykes was fourth fastest after he and his technical crew tried out some different set-up ideas, based on some of the information gathered during a recent post-race test session at Misano in Italy.
 
On a dry track surface both official Kawasaki riders found slightly less grip and a few more bumps than they remembered from their 2015 experiences, but still took the all-new model Ninja ZX-10R into the leading times on day one.
 
Laguna, home of the famous Corkscrew corner, presents unique challenges to any rider and machine package. After the previous round was held at the completely flat Misano World Circuit, there is now overnight work to do in the garages to choose the optimum race settings to take into Superpole, and then the opening race on Saturday afternoon.
 
Jonathan Rea, stated: “We were just working with the bike today, playing with the spring balance, and we also tried the new rear tyre that Pirelli brought. We reconfirmed that one with the SC0 ‘normal’ tyre, just gathering information. Tonight we will sit down and understand exactly how things are. I feel good with the bike and it feels like it did at Misano, but the grip level of the track is not so high here. I need to improve entry stability a little bit, as it seems like when we get a lot of laps on the tyre, the entry traction is not so good. It is the first day so we are learning, really. It also seems like the track is bumpier than last year but I feel good with the bike.”
 
Tom Sykes, stated: “We used the hard tyre all session and I am fairly happy. We got a lot of information from the two Friday sessions and I don’t feel we have put our best package together yet. This gives me excitement for tomorrow. We made a lot of changes and we now we need to put those into our package. We will now finish our technical chat with my crew chief Marcel and the boys in the garage and see what we can do. We based ourselves on the Misano test and some things here are not quite as clear as they were then. Compared to Misano it is lower in grip and a little bit bumpy, so we are just having to work at set-up a little bit more. Tomorrow we hope to improve our set-up again.”