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The official race report service of Kawasaki Racing Team.

20 Říjen 2017

Rea And Sykes Lead The Friday Field

Under clear skies the 12th round of the 2017 FIM Superbike World Championship got underway at Jerez with Jonathan Rea and Tom Sykes (KRT) ending the opening day in first and second places respectively on the timesheets.

After FP1 Jonathan Rea was a clear leader on pace and he maintained a strong advantage even after suffering a fall in the early stages of the afternoon FP2 session.
 
Jonathan was able to return to action at a high pace after taking to the track again for the last part of FP2, but it was his remarkable morning lap time of 1’40.291 that put him 0.597 seconds ahead of his team-mate Sykes in the final Friday rankings.
 
Still recovering from left little finger and hand injuries Sykes worked his way into the Jerez race weekend, eventually finishing second fastest and making progress all through Friday’s two hours of track time at the 4.423km long circuit in the south of Spain.
 
Tom set a personal best lap time of 1’40.888 on the recently resurfaced Jerez circuit late this afternoon and headed up a five rider group that was separated by just 0.008 seconds.
 
The KRT riders will now lead today’s top 10 qualifiers into Superpole 2 where final grid positions for the first race on Saturday will be determined.
 
Jonathan Rea, stated: “The bike worked well today. We made a long stop in the first pit stop this morning, understood the bike and made some good changes. I then went out and I felt confident with the bike. Step by step we are getting into an area where we can start to use the softer rear tyre, and that is fine. We need to understand the front tyres a bit more now. I had a strange crash, only on my second lap this afternoon, not doing anything silly. So it caught me off guard a little bit. We need to understand the data more. The bike was quickly fixed and we were able to get 20 solid minutes of track time in at the end, which were important.”
 
Tom Sykes, stated: “We are just fine-tuning the bike set-up and getting things sorted, so we improved our pace towards the end of the second session. I can go to bed tonight fairly satisfied with the work we have done. Our improvements today were a bit of a setting thing, a bit of a rider thing, and we did a lot of laps to understand things. I still cannot force the bike in some areas like I would like to, but even with this injury I feel I am still able to do the job. In the end we put in the tyres we normally use for a race and tried something closer to our race set-up. The lap times are pretty close behind me and a lot of riders set similar pace.”
 
2017 KRT Rider Statistics
Jonathan Rea: World Champion 2015, 2016 & 2017
2017: Races 22, Wins 12, Podiums 20, Superpoles 5
Career Race Wins: 50 (35 for Kawasaki)
Career Podiums: 108 (66 For Kawasaki)
Career Poles: 13 (9 For Kawasaki)
 
Tom Sykes: World Champion 2013
2017: Races: 20, Wins 2, Podiums 15, Superpoles 4
Career Race Wins: 33 (33 for Kawasaki)
Career Podiums: 99 (98 For Kawasaki)
Career Poles: 42 (42 For Kawasaki)
 
5 x Riders’ Championships (Scott Russell 1993, Sykes 2013, Rea 2015, 2016 & 2017), 1 x EVO Riders’ Championship (David Salom 2014)
2 x Manufacturers’ Championships (Ninja ZX-10R 2015 & 2016)
3 x Teams’ Championships (KRT/Provec Racing 2015, 2016 & 2017)
 
Kawasaki FIM Superbike World Championship Statistics
Total Kawasaki Race Wins: 105 – third overall
Total Kawasaki Podiums: 343 – third overall
Total Kawasaki Poles: 72 – second overall