Kawasaki’s Jonathan Rea completed the final private winter tests of 2022 fourth in the WorldSBK combined times at Barcelona.
With 134 laps of the Circuit de Barcelona - Catalunya under his belt before the rain arrived, Rea’s fastest effort, a 1’41.062 was set on day one. Completing Friday second in the standings, to Ducati’s Alvaro Bautista, the six-time WorldSBK Champion finished fourth overall as KRT called time early on its pre-season action satisfied with season-starting base settings already confirmed.
“I had a good feeling here,” Rea stated from Barcelona. “We confirmed the items that we had found positive results with in both the Jerez and Portimao tests. The weather conditions were not perfect here and the temperature was quite low, but we were able to make a lot of laps, especially on day one.
“Day two was colder but we kept working with the base of the bike. I did some more practice starts on day two, so that is getting better. We made some progress in that area.
“I ended the test with a good feeling on the bike and I am really excited to go to Aragon.
”Everybody there will have the same strategy - to set-up for the weekend and then go into free practice one. It has been a long but exciting off-season, with a lot of testing, and I have been healthy throughout. I am thankful to the team for all the hard work they have done. Now we get to go to a race weekend very soon. Thanks for the big effort, to everyone in KRT.”
“The first thing was to confirm the things we had already tested at Jerez and Portimao,” Pere Riba, Crew Chief for Jonathan Rea, confirmed. “The result has been positive. Then we also tried to understand some changes in the set-up, thinking about the race weekend. We worked on the soft tyres and the hard tyres, so we can be ready for whatever we use when we come back to race here.
“We collected very good information, we did a race simulation, and we have the base package to start the championship in Motorland Aragon. We will check that again in the two days of official testing there. We feel ready. For sure this year will be very tough, as many people are going fast, but we are all happy.”
