Jerez World Superbike Test Debrief – Tuesday

The second day of the Jerez test dawned in similar circumstances to yesterday. With dense fog and cool temperatures, it looked as though there would be sparse action on track, but almost immediately Ondrej Jezek rolled down pitlane.

With the Grillini team only running for half of the allotted time, Jezek was keen to get out and gain some experience on a World Superbike machine.

While the Czech was spinning laps, the majority of the field was biding their time for the conditions to improve. While yesterday the KRT riders stayed in the pits all day they did get some wet weather running today.

“We tested some new parts from Showa,” said Jonathan Rea. “At the Aragon test last week we used a new shock in the dry, so this morning we went out in the wet just to back-to-back it and make sure it worked well in the wet.”

“Kawasaki has also brought some new engine components, and we had a try of that, but the changes are for more power and this isn’t really a horsepower track. We don’t really use sixth gear here so it’s hard to draw conclusions on it just yet.”

While Rea worked on some new components his teammate, Tom Sykes, worked on adapting to the 2017 package.

The regulations have changed for next year and with split throttle bodies outlawed, and a change to battery size, the former champion knows that he will face a big challenge to get the most from himself and the bike.

“Today was relatively good to be honest,” said Sykes. “From pure performance point of view, it wasn’t good, but we had some little function tests that we wanted to do, so we took this opportunity in poor track conditions to get some mileage on those little changes. If the sun is shining any other day this week, we don’t need to waste any time on that. So from our point of view, good.

“Also getting a feeling for the bike and some of the changes we’ve made, overall no real meaning today. But we still managed to get some things done. With all the changes to the rules, I’m having to adapt a lot and that’s something I tried to do in Aragon. I feel we made some small steps there. So we’ll keep working on that.”

While times were not official, the teams were not running with transponders, the Kawasaki’s were the fastest bikes on track ahead of the Lorenzo Savadori on the Aprilia.

The Italian confirmed that the bike was the same specification that he used during the race weekend at Jerez and his laptimes were competitive. His teammate, Eugene Laverty, spent the day reacclimatizing to the RSV4.

“There were some damp patches out there so it was good to get some time on the tires, “said Laverty. “With these tires, the bike doesn’t react to the damp patches…if I had these conditions in MotoGP this year, then we would have been on our arse.”

“When Johnny came past, he was absolutely flying across the damp patches, so I followed suit and got going. It wasn’t very fast, a 1m43.1, but we were doing some runs on some old tires. So it’s not a great lap time, but tomorrow we’ll try to push on.

“I think we need to be looking at 1’41s at least. With the fresh tire it’s a different character, so we’re changing a little bit from the first new tire to the one at the end.”

“But I’m surprised at how much grip it has when we first touch the gas, that’s the main thing. I was trying to test front tires as well, so there’s a lot to evaluate and the fastest time came on old tires really.”

Unofficial Lap Times from the World Superbike Test in Jerez, Tuesday:

Photo: © 2016 Steve English – All Rights Reserved