Rea fifth in opening Phillip Island practice

[totalmotorcycle]

Rea fifth in opening #Phillip Island practice




Jonathan Rea was fifth fastest after today’s two timed free practice sessions for Sunday’s opening round of the 2014 FIM eni World Superbike championship at Phillip Island in Australia.

Rea’s Pata Honda team-mate Leon Haslam was seventh fastest today but the two British riders are in close touch with pace-setter Alex Lowes, who is less than half a second quicker than the Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP-mounted duo.

Indeed, by the end of the afternoon, the top 11 riders in today’s opening sessions were covered by less than a second after this morning’s opening free practice got off to a slow start with the 4.445km Phillip Island circuit still wet from morning showers.

Tomorrow morning’s third free practice session will also be timed, with the 10 fastest riders automatically qualifying for the afternoon’s second Superpole session. The riders with the 11th to 20th quickest times will go into Superpole 1, with the two fastest riders from that session going forward to Superpole 2 to determine final grid positions for Sunday’s two 22-lap races.



Jonathan Rea - 5th, 1m31.426s

We continued with our testing programme from earlier this week when we completed a race distance on the C-spec tyre. We also wanted to try the bigger Pirelli tyre but we still need to do a bit more time on that. It was harder for me to do the lap time but it might be good for the end of the race, so we’ll have to see. We have also refined our engine-braking strategies and I’m quite happy with that. I think the grip has dropped a little today and I experienced a bit of instability from the rear on corner exit so we need to look at that. It might be the new engine that we put in for the start of the season or the lack of grip, but it occurs in quite a few areas. It’s a shame we missed the first session this morning but we’ll do some more time on the big tyre tomorrow morning and also try Pirelli&rsq uo;s soft option to see if that is a potential race tyre, too. The wind changed a lot today and that made my problems in the last corner vanish because it really helped me to turn, but it also made it harder to get into turn one. Windy conditions here really do play with the set-up of the bike so we need to pay attention to that come raceday.





Leon Haslam - 7th, 1m31.533s

We’re not a million miles away, in spite of the fact that we actually had a few problems. The front brake was dragging quite badly in a straight line, which obviously affected top speed, but also in the corners. We also had slightly different software for the engine-braking so had to use the whole session getting it back to where we were in the test; and we’re still not quite there. I didn’t use the soft today and felt pretty good on the harder tyre from the test. I think we could have gone a lot quicker but just ran out of time. Tomorrow, we need to do some work on the race tyres. There are three possible options, including two softer ones, so we’ll have to see how they perform.





Ronald ten Kate - team manager

The morning was wet and, although it started to dry, the guys just did a few laps so we didn’t really learn very much. With the dry track this afternoon we could really get on with it and, after his crash on Tuesday, Leon had no problems getting back up to speed and I think he did a good job. He may be seventh but it’s all very close and, if you can gain two tenths, you can jump three places easily, so it’s OK. For Jonathan, we changed the chassis set-up and electronics setting a little after the test and he also went OK. We tested some tyres, some of which didn’t work so well, and with the softer option he managed to get fifth place, but again it’s very close. There seems to be less grip than we had in the test and with a fresh engine in the bike we had to make some adjustments for this; bu t we’re in touch, so let’s see what happens tomorrow.






Weather
Sunny Intervals


Air
20°C


Track
36°C


Humidity
45%






Practice Results

1 Alex Lowes 1m31.100s GBR SUZUKI Voltcom Crescent Suzuki
2 Marco Melandri 1m31.137s ITA APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team
3 Davide Guigliano 1m31.205s ITA DUCATI Ducati Superbike Team
4 Tom Sykes 1m31.395s GBR KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
5 Jonathan Rea 1m31.436s GBR HONDA Pata Honda
6 Eugene Laverty 1m31.448s IRL SUZUKI Voltcom Crescent Suzuki
7 Leon Haslam 1m31.533s GBR HONDA Pata Honda
8 Loris Baz 1m31.637s FRA KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
9 Chaz Davies 1m31.757s GBR DUCATI Ducati Superbike Team
10 Sylvain Guintoli 1m31.759s FRA APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team