Round five of the WorldSBK Championship started strong for the KRT pair, with Jonathan setting the fastest lap of the day and Alex Lowes finishing fourth overall.
The predicted heatwave has not yet manifested itself at Donington Park, at least on the first day, but the pace of Jonathan Rea turned out to be very high. He is already under the race lap record with his time of 1'27.016, set during FP2. He is more than half a second ahead of the next best driver, Toprak Razgatlioğlu.
alex lowes was happy with the good work he and his team did on the first day, as he prepares to take part in his home race weekend. Alex, BSB champion in 2013, lives a few kilometers from the circuit and has always had a great affinity with the undulating 4,023km Donington track.
Air and track temperatures are expected to rise throughout the weekend, so the team and drivers have taken this likelihood into account in their pre-race preparations. This task was made easier by the useful data collected during a recent high temperature test carried out at Motorland Aragón.
After the first two practice sessions on Friday, the KRT duo will now face a final FP3 session, Superpole qualifying, then Race 1 at 15 p.m. French time on Saturday July 16.
Jonathan Rhea : " You can never just take a screenshot of the latest lap times to understand all the stories. Everyone had a different strategy today, trying to figure out what's going on. But we did a good job and we were able to analyze all the tire options. Both front tires and all rear tires. Unlike Misano, where there were two additional solutions during the weekend, and that confused everything, I feel that we have control at least on the tires. In the morning I was really struggling with the front on the bumps, so we changed the weight distribution of the bike, the wheelbase. At the start of the second session, I was able to understand the pros and cons of these changes quite quickly. »
alex lowes : " The first day went well even though my best lap was canceled. I was a little greedy at the entrance to the chicane and I think I hit the green zone at the track limit. It's nice to be back in Donington. The weather has been good and I think it will improve throughout the weekend. There are already quite a few fans here and I really enjoyed it today. The pacing is pretty good, so that's good. If the temperature rises, I know which tire I'm going to use, because I did a long run with it in FP2. I'm not sure about the front tire yet. »
FP2 Superbike results at Donington Park:
Classification credit: WorldSBK.com
