Rea quickest in first day of private testing at Jerez
An all-British top-3 with Lowes and Sykes in second and third, respectively.
Day one of private testing at Jerez de la Frontera drew to a close after a non-stop 8 hours of track time, with Jonathan Rea leading the rest of the field aboard his KRT ZX-10R. The Ulsterman, who set a competitive 1’41.327 in the early afternoon, was almost edged out in the final minutes as Alex Lowes managed to lap only 12 thousands of a second slower aboard his Crescent Suzuki machine. Rea and Lowes were two of the most active on track today with 87 and 84 laps completed, respectively.
Courtesy of dry conditions throughout the whole day and temperatures reaching a peak of 17°C, almost all riders were able to make up for time lost in the previous tests by putting in a significant number of laps. The two unlucky exceptions were Sylvain Guintoli (Pata Honda World Superbike), who crashed out on his third flying lap and Leon Haslam (Red Devils Aprilia), who was forced to sit out the entire day due to technical issues with his RSV4 machine.
Despite an innocuous crash halfway through the session, Tom Sykes (Kawasaki Racing Team) proved to be in great form by ending up third fastest ahead of the factory Ducati duo of Davide Giugliano and Chaz Davies, all very close to the top of the timesheet.
Sylvain Barrier (BMW Motorrad Italia) was only seven tenths slower than Rea as he was followed by the three class rookies: Randy de Puniet (Crescent Suzuki), Michael van der Mark (Pata Honda World Superbike) and Jordi Torres (Red Devils Aprilia), ninth and less than a second away from today’s quickest lap-time. The Spaniard completed an impressive total of 94 laps in the session.
The action will resume at Jerez tomorrow for the final day of private pre-season testing.
Jerez Test Day 1 – 1- Rea 1’41.327 2- Lowes +0.012 3- Sykes +0.073 4- Giugliano +0.189 5- Davies +0.215 6- Barrier +0.760 7- de Puniet +0.863 8- van der Mark +0.924 9- Torres +0.935 10- Baiocco +1.253 11- Terol +1.372 12- Mercado +1.440 13- Salom +1.571 14- Haslam +1.849 15- Sofuoglu +2.634 16- Canepa +2.681 17- Faccani +2.879 18- Pegram +4.793 19- Guintoli +8.056
