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The official race report service of Kawasaki Racing Team.

6 Juillet 2018

Rea Third And Sykes Tenth On First Day

Having found dry weather in only the first two of three planned Friday practice sessions at Misano a wet FP3 prevented any final improvement in lap times for KRT riders Jonathan Rea and Tom Sykes today. Rea finished third fastest overall and Sykes was tenth. In a generally close period of practice in FP2 Tom was 0.823 seconds behind the lead rider but only 0.383 seconds from the second placed competitor.

After the undulations and dips of the previous Laguna Seca venue the flat and more geometric Misano presented both KRT riders and the technical staff with a whole new set of variables in the task of finding a strong machine set-up for this particular venue.
 
Despite losing the final free practice session to damp track conditions, with neither KRT rider taking to the track in FP3, Rea set competitive times throughout, and was the fastest of all in FP1. Sykes had been fifth in FP1, before he missed his planned attack on the stopwatch in FP3 due to the weather.
 
After his top ten finish today Sykes will join Rea in Superpole 2 tomorrow, to determine their final grip positions for the first of two 21-lap races at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli.
 
Leandro Mercado (Orelac Racing VerdNatura Kawasaki) will compete in Superpole 1 on Saturday, after finishing 14th overall today. Yonny Hernandez (Team Pedercini Racing Kawasaki) was 16th and Roman Ramos (Team GoEleven Kawasaki) 17th. Toprak Razgatlioglu (Kawasaki Puccetti Racing) finished up 18th in his comeback ride from the foot injury he suffered just two weeks ago at Laguna Seca.
 
WorldSBK race one at Misano is scheduled for 13.00, local time in Italy, with race two taking place on Sunday the 8th of July, also at 13.00.
 
Jonathan Rea, stated: “The character of this track is very different from Laguna Seca and it requires a different set-up, because it is very flat here. We are testing some new tyres with Pirelli and we do not really have a clear direction about that yet. When they brought the ‘big’ rear tyre it changed the character of the bike quite a lot and now with the bigger profile front tyre it just needs a bit of fine tuning. We are trying to understand that and which direction to go. But we were still fast, consistently really strong, and I am missing just a little bit of out-and-out one-lap pace.”
 
Tom Sykes, stated: “We started the two free practice sessions with fresh tyres, trying to work on race distance and understanding the bike. So I feel we have already got relatively decent speed over distance. We were going to look into the finer details of going fast over a single lap. Obviously, the weather in FP3 interrupted that. There is no real stress and the order is a little bit different from normal today. We will wait to see what we bring to the table tomorrow. It is interesting what Pirelli are bringing now. Tomorrow, in FP4, we will have a look at a different tyre combination and try to have a better go at it.”
 
2018 KRT Rider Statistics
Jonathan Rea: World Champion 2015, 2016 & 2017
2018: Races 16, Wins 8, Podiums 13, Superpoles 2
Career Race Wins: 62 (47 for Kawasaki)
Career Podiums: 125 (83 for Kawasaki)
Career Poles: 16 (12 for Kawasaki)
 
Tom Sykes: World Champion 2013
2018: Races: 16, Wins 1, Podiums 6, Superpoles 3
Career Race Wins: 34 (34 for Kawasaki)
Career Podiums: 106 (105 for Kawasaki)
Career Poles: 45 (45 for Kawasaki)
 
5 x Riders’ Championships (Scott Russell 1993, Sykes 2013, Rea 2015, 2016 & 2017), 1 x EVO Riders’ Championship (David Salom 2014)
3 x Manufacturers’ Championships (Ninja ZX-10R 2015 & 2016, Ninja ZX-10RR 2017)
3 x Teams’ Championships (KRT/Provec Racing 2015, 2016 & 2017)
 
Kawasaki FIM Superbike World Championship Statistics
Total Kawasaki Race Wins: 118 – third overall
Total Kawasaki Podiums: 368 – third overall
Total Kawasaki Poles: 78 – second overall
 
 
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