While the majority of the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship field headed to the Misano World Circuit “Marco Simoncelli” for a two-day test recently, Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team WorldSBK) and teammate Alex Lowes opted not to go with KRT sending a smaller team with test rider Florian Marino. On Thursday, 18^th May, Rea and Lowes were back on track at the Circuito de Jerez – Angel Nieto for a one-day test.

With the forecast heading into the Misano test featuring rain and cooler track conditions, the two KRT riders opted to skip the test to be able to test their ZX-10RR machines in hotter track conditions, which was possible on Thursday at Jerez. In a post on Instagram, Rea said they got the 50-degree track temperatures they were after while he was also able to complete a race simulation at the end of the day.

With track temperatures where both Rea and Lowes needed them to test as WorldSBK heads into a busy summer period, starting at Misano at the start of June before heading to Donington Park, Imola and Most in July. With four rounds coming up in the next two months at the height of summer, KRT will be hoping their one-day Jerez test, including where they did a race simulation in warmer conditions, will prove beneficial to the team and the ZX-10RR as they go in search of their first win of the 2023 campaign.

Speaking after the Misano test, where Marino completed one day, KRT Team Manager, Guim Roda, said: “Testing is so important, especially when things do not work out as planned, and especially because we don’t give up. In 2019 Alvaro Bautista won at the first four rounds, but we won the title. Of course, we are in a worse position than 2019, we are not naive, but the concept is to never give up until game is over. Not winning empowers us to work really hard to come back stronger. We need to explore all the areas to find the way to fight to win every race. That’s the target. We could not finish some upgrades we were working on with the bike, so we will try to find other options to test before Misano. We are especially trying to find more than 45-degree tarmac conditions to test on. The track temperature at Misano was not enough to work with items we wanted to work on with Alex and Jonny but checking the functionality of some software adjustments has been very useful.”

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