Although he lost some track time due to technical issues with his rear brake in the second one-hour long practice session today, Sykes improved his previous morning session best time with a 1’47.347. This put him second, and 0.097 seconds ahead of his team-mate Jonathan Rea, with one more 15 minute practice session and then Superpole qualifying to come later for both KRT riders.
Sykes could not get a planned long run/race simulation completed this afternoon but is confident that his machine set-up is already good, with just some final adjustments to be done in Saturday’s short third practice session.
With more track time available to him on Friday Rea completed a long run and will now make some small adjustments before Superpole on Saturday, which will be followed shortly afterwards by the first race of the weekend.
Rea and Sykes will hope to get their winning totals moving on again in Italy, starting on Saturday in race one and then finishing with the second race, which will be held on Sunday 1st May.
Dry weather conditions blessed the 4.936km long circuit all through day one’s practice sessions, despite some darker clouds appearing overhead at times.
Tom Sykes stated: “It was good to get second place in the time sheets, even though we had two problems with the rear brake. This also disturbed our pace but we have potential and for this I am happy. When I had the issue in the second run I was a little bit nervous but we still improved our lap time. I am happy with that. Overall I wanted to put a long run together but I think the bike is quote close to where we wanted to be. This is something positive. To improve the lap time in the afternoon session means that, all things considered, we have to be happy that we are second fastest. Chaz Davies has been unbelievably fast so we need to pay attention to that and see if tomorrow we can improve the bike a little bit over distance. I feel we are close enough to start race one now.”
Jonathan Rea stated: “We did a long run and we are working step-by-step this weekend, not making too many massive changes. We have been concentrating on electronics with Paolo. Both Paolo and Danilo, the other electronics engineer, have worked really strongly to give us a good engine brake strategy that we are developing. Today felt like a lot of testing had been done, so to put a race simulation on top of that gives a lot of information to help fine tune things. It looks like we can improve even further with that information and I am quite happy. I feel I have a got good rhythm and tomorrow is the big job. I felt like we ticked the boxes and we tried two options of race tyres. For me I feel quite clear that one of them will work better. It has been a good day and we really needed the track to be dry. I am making good progress and there are quite a few areas where we feel we can improve. Today we learned a lot.”
Roman Ramos (Go Eleven Team Kawasaki) qualified 13th on the opening day at Imola, with stand-in rider Lucas Mahias (Pedercini Racing Team Kawasaki) once more substituting for the injured Sylvain Barrier, and going 18th fastest. Ramos was later declared unfit because of a fall and fracture to his first left metacarpus. Dominic Schmitter (Grillini Racing Team Kawasaki) placed 19th. Saeed Al Sulaiti (Pedercini Racing Team Kawasaki) was 21st and Josh Hook (Grillini Racing Team Kawasaki) 24th.