World Superbike Champion-elect Jonathan Rea expects the quickest laptimes of the Jerez weekend to come in tomorrow morning’s third free practice session when the track will be cooler than it was in Spain this afternoon.
The works Kawasaki rider ended the day second on the combined timesheets behind team-mate Tom Sykes and in the same position behind Alex Lowes in the second session, which saw track temperatures soar from 31°C to 48°C but he says there is some room for improvement in his base setup.
“As the temperature was so high, there was a little less grip than in free practice one so I expect tomorrow morning to be the fastest session of the weekend but I was surprised how close we got to the FP1 times this afternoon,” said Rea, speaking to bikesportnews.com at the track.
“We have some margin to improve with our base setup and the thing is we changed to the B tyre and used it with a 15-lap front which was already quite squashy and it didn’t give me the confidence to push hard for a lap time.”
