Jonathan Rea and Andrea Locatelli returned to the track with full enthusiasm for the final Friday Free Practice sessions of the 2024 FIM Superbike World Championship at Circuito de Jerez, today.
After wet weather in Estoril last Friday, a fully sunny day despite a spot of overnight rain was a welcome start to proceedings in Spain. Jerez is a circuit that both Rea and Locatelli are intimately familiar with, having covered countless laps in testing and races in their careers in top flight motorcycle racing.
They lost no time getting up to speed with the latest track conditions and working on the optimum race set-up for their respective Yamaha R1 WorldSBK machines. In Free Practice 1, Rea climbed as high as second place in the combined time sheets, finishing fourth in the morning session and finally fifth overall in the afternoon to complete a solid day’s work.
For Locatelli, his confidence didn’t quite come as quickly today, but the Italian rider completed three solid long runs with different settings to assess the best race tyre and provide a wealth of feedback to take a step tomorrow morning.
Free Practice 3 begins tomorrow at the slightly later time of 9:15 CEST, to allow for the late sunrise in the Andalusian region of Spain, followed by Superpole at the normal time of 11:00 and Race 1 at 14:00.
Jonathan Rea: P5 – 1'39.874
“The track wasn’t in great condition this morning because there was some water coming through from rain overnight, but the same as everyone we just got to work to assess the main tyre options available for this weekend over the course of the day. The track surface grip level was down compared to the winter tests: in January it felt almost perfect but today I was struggling to find the same feeling with some spinning on the rear tyre and just in the last part of the corner having the grip to turn well. A few areas to work on for tomorrow. I put everything together and did a good lap time but I think for our true potential we still need to improve. It’s going to be really important tomorrow to start well in FP3 and give ourselves a good chance with Superpole. As we found out in Estoril, when you have track position on Lap 1, it’s much easier to fight for a good result.”
Andrea Locatelli: P13 – 1'40.202
“It was a bit of a strange day, but we learnt something about the choice of tyre especially for the race – and we know and we understand where we need to work to improve the feeling. I think the results on the overall classification are not so “real” because many riders used the qualifying tyre at the end and we didn’t try this. We finished a bit on the back, but especially in the beginning we were not so far from the top – but still missing something. We know that there will be another opportunity tomorrow to try the bike and prepare in FP3, then we will try to make a best Superpole qualifying and then we will go for Race 1. Today, was a bit of a struggle but not too bad in the end for the lap time and not too far away with a good base set-up. Looking forward now and we will see what we can do tomorrow.”
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