The Jerez circuit hosted the first winter tests of the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship on Thursday and Friday.
The official Kawasaki Racing and BMW Motorrad WorldSBK teams were there, as well as the Kawasaki Puccetti Racing team with Tom Sykes, as Sam Lowes on a Stock motorcycle.
Unfortunately, if showers wet the Andalusian track for almost the entire first day, deciding the official Kawasakis of the Kawasaki Racing Team to refrain from riding on Thursday, the scenario repeated itself this Friday morning, leaving Scott Redding on his 1000 RR from the BMW Motorrad WorldSBK the leadership of a session that was not very significant until then.
Fortunately, the track dried at the beginning of the afternoon, allowing Jonathan Rhea to immediately make the powder speak on his Ninja ZX-10RR, in 1'41.298, half a second faster than a Scott Redding yet diligent since the morning on a wet track.
The coating improved further over the hours and it was in the last minutes that Jonathan Rhea established the benchmark for this test, in 1'39.911, to compare with the pole of Toprak Razgatlioğlu in 1'38.512 in 2021. No important lessons therefore seem to be learned from this first salvo of the 2023 season, and we will have to wait until tomorrow to have the reactions of the drivers.
Behind the Northern Irishman, just 0,193 seconds behind, we find Scott Redding on the newly profiled BMW which accumulated 138 laps over the two days.
alex lowes et Tom Sykes complete the meager Superbike table, while Sam Lowes continued his recovery on a Yamaha R1 Stock, completing a total of 79 laps.
