Reigning World Superbike Champion Jonathan Rea believes that due to the weekend scheduling changes, Saturday’s race one will now be much more of a learning curve and that setup work done on Friday even more crucial.

The Isle of Man resident, who finished fastest on the second day of testing at Phillip Island, thinks the two hour-long sessions on Friday is where a lot of the work now must be done in order to be ready for Superpole and race one while more fine tuning can be carried out on Saturday evening.

“Friday is now the most important day. Normally on a race weekend, most of the progress is made overnight when the engineers sit down, analyse the data and do their work. Now we only have Friday night to do that,” said Rea, speaking at Phillip Island.

“In Superpole, we can’t learn much as that is a time attack and not working for the race. Race one is going to be a learning curve. The biggest advantage will be a good crew and I know I am in good hands.”