Pata Honda's Jonathan Rea set the fourth fastest lap time in today’s opening World Superbike free practice sessions at Magny-Cours in France, but the racer is feeling a tad frustrated after some ‘mistakes’ cost him a super fast lap time.
The British rider took his Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP around the French track in a time of 1’38.157, just 0.2 seconds off the time set by Ducati’s Davide Giugliano. During the first free practice outing Rea’s crew managed to improve the electronics and found that on a new tyre the bike had the potential to be really quick.
“I’m quite satisfied with our day to be honest, although we had a couple of problems. We got off to a steady start in the first session but had a bit of a misunderstanding over the direction we wanted to go, which lost us a bit of time. But during the break the guys worked well, especially in the electronics area where we made a lot of improvements,” said Rea.
“This afternoon I was able to do a run and got into a rhythm and went steadily faster. When I tried with the new tyre at the end I was feeling really, really good, but I made some mistakes on the lap so it was frustrating that the lap time wasn’t better.
“But the bike is really user-friendly here and it’s important to have a bike that you can race hard for 21 laps at Magny-Cours. We’ve got a good base setting now that we should be able just to fine-tune to aim for the front row tomorrow.”
