Friday Free Practice got underway for Pata Prometeon Yamaha and its riders Jonathan Rea and Andrea Locatelli for the team’s home round at Donington Park today, at Round 5 of the 2024 FIM Superbike World Championship.
One of a handful of British riders in the WorldSBK class, eyes were on Rea to see how he adapted to the Yamaha R1 WorldSBK on one of the championship’s oldest venues. The #65 crew kept their heads down during the day to overcome a technical issue during FP1 and give Rea a set-up to fight during the weekend’s main points-paying races. Despite missing out on a complete time attack in the closing stages of FP2, Rea was running within the top six on race pace during the afternoon session.
Locatelli continued working to build on his feeling on the Yamaha R1 WorldSBK, taking confidence from his Misano results last month. Alongside his #55 crew, he focused purely on race set-up and pace without a qualifying simulation to finish the day in a positive seventh place overall.
The first of two race days starts tomorrow morning with one final Free Practice 3 at 9:00 BST, followed by Superpole qualifying at 11:00 and Race 1 at 14:00.
Andrea Locatelli: P7 – 1'26.688
“I think we did a good job today because in both sessions we had a good rhythm and made a good lap time. Okay, the position is not the best, but we know what we did today – especially in the afternoon, we only used one SC0 on the rear. We’re working really well to prepare for the race because in the end what will be important is the race result. I hope it will be dry tomorrow, but I think in general we have a good base set-up, I have a really good feeling with my R1. We were consistent until the end with the used tyre, so I think we are ready to fight and that we can get good results. Tomorrow morning it will be important to also prepare for the Superpole, but I think we have some margin around the bike where we can improve a little bit more and then tomorrow morning we will try to make a step forward on the lap time – and then we will try to start in front to fight for the race.”
Jonathan Rea: P12 – 1'26.886
“We lost a lot of the first session due to a technical problem, and the guys weren’t exactly sure of the issue causing it, but we changed a lot of components in the bike and in FP2 it was gone. I didn’t really build up, but I got enough of a feeling to know that the bike felt good here. In the beginning of the second session I started with a long run with race tyres and just built my confidence working more precisely with electronics to set up the engine brake to Donington for my style. That’s an area we still need to improve a bit. We put in a new tyre right at the end and we just missed getting a second fast lap – in my first lap, I lost a lot of traction, it just wasn’t a perfect lap. We know there’s a little bit more potential than the result shows! It’s been a bit of a frustrating day because we couldn’t build into the day from FP1. A solid job, we didn’t change the bike too much, I just got some laps in the afternoon to build confidence and understand the R1 here and sector-by-sector just putting it together.”
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